There was another way. For as she stared at the shard, she felt its magic ambience. It reached out to her, touching her mind, making it more clever, and it touched her heart, making her desire it with a passion as strong as she had ever desired a man. It touched her power, and suddenly she knew what she could do. And the crystal itself would help her.
Lightly she touched one finger to the shard, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Creating-vapor. Water vapor. Forcing water into every tiny crack and crevice of the holder until it was completely saturated. And then, with a twist of thought unlike any she had done before-
She turned it to ice.
Water, she had learned in her lessons from Marcus, expanded when it was frozen. Everything else contracted. In a moment, she had chilled the area down to where her breath made clouds in the air; the ice itself was as hard as steel.
In the past she had been able to conjure many substances, but they were normally of ambient temperature. Metal would not be hot or cold, water would seem cool but be the temperature of the surrounding air. One exception was ice: that was by its nature cold, so conjured that way. Otherwise it would have appeared as a puddle of water. But to actually, magically, change the temperature of an existing object or substance-that was a power hitherto reserved to the demons. Now, by virtue of the shard, it was hers. So she could heat water-or freeze it. She could do what no other Mazonite could, and what therefore the defenders of the shard had not anticipated. It had outsmarted them.
The frozen ice held the rods in place while she carefully extracted the shard from the holder, and continued to hold them while she conjured a perfect replica in its place.
Tucking the shard inside her tunic, she returned to the outer chamber, conjured a ladder of stone to the hole in the ceiling, then continued conjuring and dissipating stone steps before and behind her, until she had reached the chamber above.
Then it was another squeeze through the passageway to the outer world-and a joyful, but silent reunion with Faro and Thesius, before the three of them made their escape into the mountains and the rally-point with Ware.
Only one thing disappointed her: she did not know how long that conjured replica would last. It had, after all, been produced with the aid of the shard itself. It might last only the day; it might last for weeks, months, or even years.
But eventually, it would dissipate on its own. And she truly regretted the fact that she would not be there to see what happened when it did!
“Xylina, why are you stopping?” Faro asked, as Xylina reined in her horse at the edge of the Pacha realm. Their trek across it had been a near mirror of their original trip, although with fewer people, and instead of the Pacha visiting their camps, they had traded conjured wine and feasts for Pacha hospitality. The Pacha had been thrilled with the bargain, and nearly every chieftain that had hosted them had begged them to stay.
She did not answer at once; instead, she stared at the bleak, and yet beautiful landscape. Finally, she spoke.
“Gentlemen-do you still like the Pacha? Do you think you could live here?” Perhaps it was the effect of the shard, which she now wore in a conjured gold locket, so that it enhanced her while not harming Ware or the men. But perhaps it was instead the time she’d had to think on the way back-to reflect on exactly where her loyalty should lie, and the effect on the Mazonites when the shard came into Adria’s hands.
Ware urged his mount to take the few steps needed to bring it beside hers. “You are not going to take the crystal to Adria, are you,” he said quietly, making it more of a statement than a question.
She shook her head. “No matter what I do, if the shard goes to the Queen, it will change my realm and my people, and for the worse. Adria will become a terrible tyrant, and no one will be able to stop her. Eventually, the shard will force Adria to bring it to the main stone, and that will be the end of everything I have known.”
Faro’s brow wrinkled for a moment. “You did make a vow-” he reminded her.
She smiled. “I am learning to think like a demon, my friend. I made a vow to retrieve the shard. I didnotvow to give it to Adria.”
Thesius shook his head as she turned to see his reaction. “You can’t take it back to where it was. That would be stupidand suicidal!”
She sighed, and her horse stirred restively under her. “No. I can’t take it back, I can’t simply ‘lose’ it, for some poor fool will be drawn to it and in her ignorance take it to the main stone. I must keep it, and attempt to use it as little as possible. And if I am going to keep it-I must stay out of Mazonia.” She looked searchingly at all of them. “This is an exile, you know-”
“Not for me,” Thesius protested. “You can’t be exiled from somewhere you’ve never been! The Pacha are plenty interesting enough to keep me busy for a long time!”
“Nor for me,” Faro said. “This isn’t exile-”
“No, my dearest friend,” she told him, with a warm smile. “For you, it is freedom. You may stay with me if you wish, or go if you wish-”
“I’ll stay,” he said firmly. “Someone has to keep you out of trouble.”
That left only Ware, but as he slipped his hand wordlessly into hers, she knew what his answer was. She squeezed the hand, the unhumanly graceful, beloved hand, for a long moment-
Then turned her horse and led them all back to the last Pacha village they had visited.
There was only one thing remaining.
To wait for the Queen’s answer to this betrayal.
The answer was not long in coming.
”What?” Adria shrieked, rising from her throne like an enraged cat.
The Pacha agent, still in her leather and paints, repeated her news, although she shrank back a little from the Queen’s rage. “Xylina has obtained the stone you wished, but has evidently decided to retain it for herself. She has had it set in gold and wears it about her neck. She has taken up residence with the Sandfox Clan of the Pacha. They are building a home for her and her retinue. There are three men with her: the demon, her personal slave, and another man who looks like her brother.”
Adria’s anger cooled as swiftly as it had heated, but it did not leave her. Instead, it turned to something colder and more purposeful. She sank back down onto her throne, and considered the matter carefully, dismissing the spy with an absent wave of her hand.
She had hoped that the naive child would bring the shard directly to her, but the demon must have revealed what it was and what its powers were to her, and greed had overcome her. This was unsurprising, really; it was what Adria herself would have done if their positions were reversed.
But there were only three with the girl. The Pacha would not protect her against the Queen’s wrath. They had a treaty, after all; they would abide by that treaty. There was only one thing to be done: to go and take the shard from the girl by force.
Adria summoned her majordomo and ordered him to bring Xantippe to the private audience chamber. When the old warrior appeared, Adria studied her for a long time before speaking.
“You once commanded one of the armies, did you not?” she asked.
Xantippe nodded, brusquely. “It was before your reign, my Queen,” the older woman replied, “But yes, I did. My record will show that I was a very successful commander.”
“Good,” Adria replied, leaning forward. “Now-how would you like to participate in both the downfall of Xylina and the destruction of her slave Faro?”
Xantippe’s eyes widened slightly, and she smiled.
Less than a day later, two armies marched out of the capital. The first, smaller and faster than the second, and composed entirely of veterans, was commanded by Xantippe, and was intended to cut Xylina’s path of escape across Pacha lands. The second, composed mostly of newly-recruited slaves, was commanded by Queen Adria herself. This was the army that Xylina was intended to see.
The other, she was not meant to see until it was too late.
“I’m sorry, Xylina; I should have guessed she would do something like that-” Th
esius was babbling; this was the fifth or sixth time that he had repeated his apology, but the second of Adria’s forces had come as a terrible surprise to all of them. Xylina could not blame him for babbling. The jaws of the trap had closed on them, before they even realized that it was a trap.
Adria had done exactly what Xylina had expected-in part. She had brought an army across the border, and had come straight for Xylina, presumably to claim the crystal. Xylina had thrown dozens of traps, pitfalls, and dangers into the army’s path; Adria had simply used her men to clear her way, marching forward sometimes literally over the bodies of her slaves. The Mazonite Guards with the army had ensured that no man who tried to desert survived the attempt-so the poor slaves had the choice of a probable death, or a certain one.
All four of them were exhausted by their work on defenses; they had not changed their clothing in days, or eaten except whatever they could snatch on the fly. But Xylina was the weariest, for upon her had fallen the burden of conjuration. She had been aided by the shard, but the time and effort still were hers. It had not helped that Ware had insisted on training her in a special way, to learn to better control the new power the shard gave her to affect temperature. So that she could not only freeze water, but heat it to boiling, or heat other substances to the burning point. She understood his logic, for the ability of temperature conjuration was potentially an enormous asset. But the constant practicing was wearing, and she wished he had been willing to let it wait until she didn’t have so much else to do.
Xylina had been sickened by the wholesale slaughter; so much so that she had not thought to look for some other trick of Adria’s until it was too late. Now their only route of escape was closed-and Adria and the remnants of her army were closing quickly.
There must be something she could do, she thought in desperation. There had to be some other way out of this trap! If only she could challenge the Queen to single-combat…
“Xylina,” Ware said urgently, recalling her to her surroundings and the tiny rock-walled room in which the four of them sat, “you must challenge the Queen. It is the only way.”
“How can I?” she wailed, despairing. “This is not Mazonia! She is not bound by the rules with a traitor and an oath-breaker! She need not-”
“But you have something she wants, little mistress,” Faro pointed out, shrewdly and unexpectedly. “You have the shard. Send to her by the Pacha, and tell her that you will destroy it unless-”
“Unless she agrees to meet me! Of course!” Xylina’s despair turned again to hope, and she jumped out of her simple wooden chair to hug Faro around the neck. He blushed, but grinned. Thesius had already run out of the room to fetch one of their Pacha “allies,” who were willing to act as messengers and sometimes scouts so long as such duty did not directly involve them in combat.
But no sooner had the messenger been dispatched than Xylina’s mood deflated. “I will not need to-” she said to Ware, pleadingly. “Will I? I do not think I could bear to-”
He sighed. “You do realize, beloved, that this is the shard’s first effect upon you? That it makes itself so precious to you that you cannot bear the thought of destroying it?”
She nodded, sadly. Shedid know that, and her intellect rebelled at being so controlled-and yet, controlled it was, and she could no more smash the shard than destroy Ware.
But the demon moved to stand behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders, massaging the tense muscles of her neck and shoulders gently. “Do not worry, beloved. The Queen is more influenced by her desire for the shard than you are. She will think only that you are serious, and seeing yourself lost, your cause in ruins, and yourself about to be killed, that you will be willing to take the shard with you. She will believe your bluff, and she will not know that it is a bluff. You will see.”
Before half the morning had passed, the messenger had returned, and all was as Ware had foretold. The Queen had agreed to meet Xylina in a traditional Mazonite challenge. She had even proposed the conditions, all of which both Ware and Xylina agreed were reasonable. With one addition. They were to meet at noon, in an isolated area of Xylina’s choosing. All men and Mazonites were to stand out of bowshot range of the site. Xylina was to be permitted to booby-trap the area, so long as she led the Queen inside herself, thus ensuring the safe way in. They were to meet nude, so as to ensure than neither carried in physical weaponry, and the crystal was to be placed on a stone in the middle of the ground, to be taken by the survivor. Other than that-there were to be no rules. Just one modification, concerning the crystal, to make that aspect fair.
“You are younger and stronger, since this journeying has hardened you, beloved,” Ware said, when they had read the proposal through. “But do not underestimate Adria. She is cunning and vicious, and she has survived many of these challenges.”
Xylina took a deep breath, and looked into his eyes. It had finally come to this-a challenge that she did not want, for power she did not wish to have; something she had tried to avoid and which had, in the end, come for her.
And yet-the reward would be something Adria had never known, and would never understand.
”Ihave to survive only one, beloved,” she told him. “And believe me, I do intend to survive that one.”
The burning sun beat down upon the two women: two combatants, who were the very antithesis of each other. Xylina, small, slender, long-waisted and high breasted, with her blond hair streaming down to her waist-and Adria, lean, whip-cord-tough, no more figure than a boy, and with her dark hair cut aggressively short. And yet Adria, who was by far the more experienced and tougher-looking, already showed some slight discomfort-perhaps from the exposure to the sun. Xylina, clothed only in her signature banner of hair, seemed completely serene and at ease-perhaps because she had been the plaything of the elements for some time now, and had gotten used to them.
Between them lay the crystal, on a flat rock in the center of the makeshift arena. Xylina had insisted on that one change in the challenge-rules; the crystal lay beneath a pair of transparent domes of near-unbreakable adamant. She had created one, Adria had created the other. Any force great enough to smash the domes would also smash the crystal. Neither of the combatants would be able get at the crystal unless the other was dead, for at death, all conjurations dissolved.
Adria had not liked that rule, although she had agreed to it, and her glance kept straying to the glinting gold-and-crystal shape of the protected shard. Perhaps she hoped to trick Xylina into dissolving her conjuration so that the Queen could grab the shard and use it to win. Or to lure Xylina away from it, to where she could be ambushed or driven away. In a day her conjuration would dissolve anyway, and then the Queen could get the shard. Ware had warned Xylina that if the Queen found any way to get the shard without finishing the combat, she would. “Kill her,” he had cautioned. “No mercy, no hesitation. Just kill her, as quickly as you can. Nothing else.” Faro and Thesius had nodded agreement.
So Xylina did not look at the shard. She kept her attention fixed firmly on the distant figure of Xantippe. When the old warrior dropped the banner she held, the combat would begin. Only Adria knew what Adria would do first, although it was a fair bet that it would be a sudden and overwhelming attack. One of the reasons that Adria had been so successful in these challenges was that she never did the same thing twice, so there was no way to anticipate her. Every combat she had undertaken had begun differently.
Xylina hoped that her own first move would take the Queen off-guard. The banner dropped.
An enormous block of stone appeared just above where Xylina was standing, and crashed down into the ground, smashing everything beneath it to powder. But Xylina was no longer there.
She had created a tiny springboard just in front of herself, and had used it to catapult herself through the air, landing well out of range of the stone, and-most importantly-right next to the domes protecting the shard. Now she could use the domes as a kind of shield, and unless Adria wanted to risk smashing the crystal, she
could not use any more weapons like that block of stone. If she dispelled her own dome, Xylina would be able to get her hands on the crystal, thus greatly increasing her own power. Adria’s scream of rage told Xylina that this first ploy, at least, was a success. Now Xylina took her second move, while Adria was still off-balance. It was the essence of simplicity: she copied the Queen’s first move.
A block of stone the same size as the one Adria had made appeared over the Queen’s head. And stayed there-for the Queen had conjured several stout metal posts to support its weight. A standard defense for a standard attack.
So the first round was done. There were no turns in such combat, but the action did tend to fall into segments as one attacked and the other countered. A woman who did not counter would soon be dead.
There was more than the usual significance to this round, however. The Queen had tried to finish the battle swiftly, and had failed. Conjuration was limited; a woman’s magic grew progressively fatigued, until finally she was unable to conjure any more. The victor in past battles between ranking women had generally been the one whose power of conjuration outlasted that of her opponent. Xylina suspected that the Queen had gambled most of her power on the first ploy, hoping not to have to follow up. She also suspected that her own power of conjuration was now significantly greater than the Queen’s, because of her practice in the wilderness. Xylina could conjure a second block the mass of the first; she doubted that the Queen could.
But at the moment this didn’t matter, because there was no way to drop such a block on the Queen. The stout posts would support both, leaving the Queen unscathed. Defense in such cases was usually cheaper than attack. So the massive conjurations were over-unless Xylina could somehow force the Queen out of her impromptu shelter where she would be vulnerable to another block. She wanted to save her power until the Queen thought she was safe from it. So for now Xylina planned to limit herself to diminishingly smaller conjurations, as if she were weakening, hoping to make the Queen overconfident.
If I Pay Thee Not in Gold Page 39