The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Omnibus

by Barbara Hambly

  Other guards surrounded them, men and a few women in the bright panoplies of the mercenary troops. They were escorted through the courts and gateways of the Outer Citadel, up to the massive gatehouse that loomed against the sky, guarding the way into the Inner Citadel. The Dark Eagle strode now at Sun Wolf’s side, the chain mail of his shirt jingling, the gilded spike that protruded through the dark, fluttering veils of his helmet crests flashing in the wan daylight.

  “Wait until you come into the Inner Citadel, if you think his power has thinned.”

  They entered the darkness of the gatehouse, two men holding the chain that joined Sun Wolf’s wrists, the rest of the troop walking with drawn swords behind him. All the while the Wolf was concentrating, his mind calm and alert as in battle, waiting for his chance to escape and reviewing the way down the mountain.

  Daylight blazed ahead. Like a huge mouth, a gate opened around them. As they stepped from the dense shadows, Sun Wolf saw that it led onto a kind of causeway that spanned the long, stone-walled ditch separating the Outer Citadel from the Inner. At the center, the causeway was broken by a railless drawbridge. The pit itself crawled with nuuwa.

  In spite of the day’s cold, the carrion stink of them rose in a suffocating wave. Halfway across the drawbridge itself, the Wolf stopped. Turning, he saw that the Dark Eagle had his hand on his sword hilt. “Don’t try it,” the mercenary said quietly. “Believe me, if I went over, I guarantee that you’d go, too.”

  “Would it make that much difference?”

  The Dark Eagle cocked a sardonic eyebrow. “That depends on what you think your chances of escaping from the Inner Citadel are.”

  Below them, the nuuwa had begun to gather, their grunting ululations shattering the air. Sun Wolf glanced at the men holding his chain, then back at the Eagle. He could see that the sheer wall of the Inner Citadel was broken by two gates, one fairly close and one several hundred feet away, with steps leading down into the pit of the nuuwa, plus the heavily guarded gate on their own level that let onto the causeway. There were gates into the pit from the Outer Citadel as well. It was a good bet that those were all heavily barred.

  It was a gamble—to die horribly now, or to risk an uglier fate against an almost nonexistent chance of escape.

  Compared with this, he thought bitterly as he moved off again toward the looming maw of the Inner Citadel’s gates, the choice Sheera had given him on the ship appeared monumental in its opportunities. But he would not give up when the chance remained to play for time.

  The nuuwa’s screams followed them, like derisive jeers.

  “You’ll be down there soon enough,” the Dark Eagle remarked at his elbow. “It’s a pity, for no one knows as well as I how fine a soldier you are, my barbarian. But I know that’s what my lord Wizard does with those who go against him. And after that thing gets through gnawing your brains out, you won’t much care about the accommodations.”

  Sun Wolf glanced back at him. “What is it?” he asked. “What are those—those flame-things? Does he create them?”

  The mercenary captain frowned, as if gauging the reasons for the question and how much he would give away in his answer. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s a—a darkness in the room at the bottom of the Citadel, a cold. They come out of that darkness; usually one or two, but sometimes in flocks. Other times there’ll be days, weeks, with nothing. He himself won’t go into the room—I think he fears them as much as anyone else does. He can’t command them as he does the nuuwa.”

  “Can he command the darkness they come from?”

  The Dark Eagle paused in his stride, those swooping black brows drawing together beneath the crested helmet rim. But all he said was, “You have changed, my barbarian, since we rode together in the East.”

  The black doors of the Inner Citadel opened. Its shadows swallowed them.

  The dread of the place, the eerie terror that permeated the very air, struck Sun Wolf like a blow in the face as he crossed the threshold. Like a dog that would not pass the door of a haunted room, he stopped, his breath catching in his lungs; the men dragged him through by the chain on his wrists, but he could see that their faces, too, were wet with sweat. Fear filled the shadowy maze of tunnels and guardrooms on the lower level of the Citadel, as if a species of gas had been spread upon the air; the men who surrounded him with a hedge of drawn swords looked nervously about them, as if they were not certain in which direction the danger lay. Even the Dark Eagle’s eyes darted from shadow to shadow, the only restlessness in his still face.

  But more than the fear, Sun Wolf could feel the power there, cold and almost visible, like an iridescent fog. It seemed to cling to the very walls, as it had pervaded the tunnel of the gate—a strength greater than that of Altiokis, all-pervasive and yet tangible. He felt that, if he only knew how, he could have gathered it together in his hands.

  They ascended a stair and passed through a guarded door. It shut behind them, and Sun Wolf looked around him in sudden, utter amazement at the upper levels of the tower, the inner heart of the Citadel of Altiokis, the dwelling place of the greatest wizard on the face of the earth.

  Quite factually, Sun Wolf said, “I’ve seen better taste in whorehouses.”

  The Dark Eagle laughed, his teeth and eyes bright in his swarthy face. “But not more expensive materials, I daresay,” he commented and flicked with a fingernail the gold that sheathed the inner side of the great doors. “A house, as my lord Wizard is fond of saying, fit for a man to live in.”

  Sun Wolf’s eyes traveled slowly from the jeweled garlands that embroidered the ivory panels of the ceiling, down slender columns of pink porphyry and polished green malachite twined with golden serpents, to the tastelessly pornographic statues in ebony, alabaster, and agate that stood between them. Gilding was spread like butter over everything; the air was larded with the scent of patchouli and roses.

  “A man, maybe,” he said slowly, realizing it was only a gross exaggeration of the kind of opulence he would have gone in for himself, not too many months ago. Then he understood what had shocked him in his soul about the place and about all the fortress of the Wizard King. “But not the greatest of the wizards; not the only wizard left on the face of the earth, damn it.” He looked back at the Dark Eagle, wondering why the man did not understand. “This is obscene.”

  The captain chuckled. “Oh, come now, Wolf.” He gestured at the shamelessly posturing statues. “You’re getting squeamish in your old age. You’ve seen worse than this-in the cathouses in Kwest Mralwe—the most expensive ones, that is.”

  “I don’t mean that,” the Wolf said. He looked around him again, at the gilded archways, the embroidered hangings, and the bronze lampstands on which burned not flames, but round, glowing bubbles of pure light. In his mind, he was comparing the garish waste with Yirth’s shadowy workroom, with its worn and well-cared-for books, its delicate instruments of brass and crystal, and its dry, muted scent of medicinal herbs. “He is deathless, he is powerful; he has command over magic that I would trade my soul for. He can have anything he wants. And he chooses this—trash.”

  The Dark Eagle cocked an amused eyebrow up at the Wolf and signaled his men. They jerked on the chain and rattled their swords, leading Sun Wolf on through the wide, softly lighted halls of the upper levels, their feet scuffing over silken rugs or whispering over carved jade tiles. “I remember you almost cut my throat fighting over trash very much like this when we looted the palace at Thardin,” he reminded the Wolf with a grin.

  Sun Wolf remembered it. He could not explain that that had been before the pit and the ordeal of the anzid; he could not explain, could not make the Eagle understand, the monstrousness of what Altiokis was. He only said, “How could a mind that trivial achieve this kind of power?”

  The Dark Eagle laughed. “Whoa! Teach him a few tricks and he knows all about wizardry and power, does he?”

  Sun Wolf was silent. He could not say how he knew what he knew, or why it seemed inconceivable to
him that a man with a mind whose greatest ambitions rose no higher than dirty statues and silk rugs could have gained the power to become deathless, could have made himself the last, most powerful wizard on the earth. He understood, then, Yirth’s anger at his frightened rejection of his power; he felt it reflected in his own outrage at a man who would not only so waste his own vast potential but destroy everyone else’s as well.

  Doors of white jade and crystal swung open. The room beyond them was black—black marble floor and walls, pillars of black marble supporting a vaulted ceiling of shadow. A ball of pale bluish light hung over the head of the man who overflowed the huge chair of carved ebony between the columns at the far end of the room, and the light picked out the details of the sculpted dragons and gargoyles, of the writhing sea life and shining insects, that covered the chair, the pillars, and the wall. The incense-reeking darkness seemed filled with magic; but with a curious clarity of the senses, Sun Wolf saw how flawed it was, like a prostitute’s makeup seen in the light of day. Whatever Altiokis had been, as the Dark Eagle had said, he was slipping now. Having destroyed everyone else’s power, he was letting his own run to seed as well.

  Looking at him as he squatted, obscenely gross, in his ebony chair, for a moment the Wolf felt, not fear, but angry disgust. Not even unlimited evil could give this man dignity. Sun Wolf’s captors pushed him forward until he stood alone before the Wizard King, his shoulders dragged down by the weight of his chains.

  Altiokis belched and scratched his jewel-encrusted belly. “So,” he said, in a voice thick with brandy, “you think the palace of Altiokis, the greatest prince this world has known, looks like a whorehouse?”

  His wizard’s senses had spread throughout that tawdry palace; he had heard every word that they had said. The Dark Eagle looked frightened, but Sun Wolf knew how it was done, though he himself could not do it. He only looked at the Wizard King, trying to understand what unlimited life, unlimited power, and unlimited boredom had done to this man, this last and most powerful wizard.

  “You poor ass, did you really think you could get away from me that easily?” Altiokis asked. “Did you really have any idea of what you’d be up against when you accepted the commission of that fool, whatever his name was—the man who hired you? One of the Thanes, I think we said. Not that it matters, of course. I know who my enemies are. We’ll have them gathered in...”

  The Dark Eagle’s bright blue eyes widened with alarm. “My lord, we don’t know—”

  “Oh, be silent,” Altiokis snapped pettishly. “Cowards—I am surrounded by cowards.”

  “My lord,” the Dark Eagle grated, “if you arrest without proof, there’ll be trouble among the Thanes...”

  “Oh, there’s always trouble among the Thanes,” the Wizard King retorted angrily. “And there always has been—we needed only the excuse to put them down. Let them come against me—if they dare. I will crush them...” The dark, little eyes glittered unnaturally bright in the gloom. “...as I will crush this slave.”

  He had risen from his chair, his eyes holding Sun Wolf’s, and the Wolf saw in the wizard what had struck him before. There was very little that was human left of the man. The fire within was eating it away, his soul literally rotting, like the minds of the nuuwa. Like them, the Wolf realized, Altiokis existed almost solely to devour.

  Sun Wolf fell back a step as the Wizard King raised the staff with its evil, gleaming head. At a distance of several feet, he could already feel the searing pain that radiated like waves of heat from the metal. Altiokis raised it, and the Wolf retreated until he felt the sword points of the guards press his back.

  “Are you stupid,” the Wizard King whispered, “or only a nerveless animal? Or don’t you believe what could happen to you here?”

  “I believe you,” Sun Wolf said, keeping a wary eye on the staff, which hovered a foot or so in front of his throat. His voice was a dry rasp, the only sound in that hushed darkness of perfume and sweat. “I just don’t believe that anything I can say will stop you from doing what you choose.”

  It was as polite a way as any he could think of to say that he made it a policy never to argue with a crazy man.

  A sneer contorted the greasy face. “So it has wisdom, after all,” the wizard said. “Pity you did not exercise it sooner. I have lived longer than you know. I am versed in the art of crushing the soul from the body, while leaving the brain time for—reflection. I could put the blood worms on you, until a month from now you would be nothing but a crawling mass of maggots, begging me for the mercy of death. Or I could blind and cripple you with drugs and find a job for you hauling bath water for my mercenaries—eh? Or I could wall you into a stone room, with only a cup of water, and that water filled with anzid, and leave you to choose between slow death from poison and slower from thirst.”

  Sun Wolf fought to keep his expression impassive, knowing full well that the fat man had both the power and the inclination to mete out any one of those fates, merely for the entertainment of seeing him die. But, sickened as he was by horror, two things remained very clear in the back of his brain.

  The first was that Altiokis had never passed the Great Trial. He clearly had no idea that anzid was anything other than a particularly loathsome poison. And that meant that he had derived his power from some other source.

  It would explain some things, the Wolf thought, his mind struggling to grasp that awareness. The power that pervaded the lower level of the tower and that filled the mines was then not entirely from Altiokis’ attenuated personality. It was something else, something foul and filthy, not like Yirth’s academic sorcery, nor what the Wolf felt of the wild magic that seemed to fill his own soul. Was the power only channeled through the Wizard King from the darkness that the Eagle had spoken of, the darkness that dwelt in the innermost room of the tower? A power that had no ambitions, but that Altiokis had seized upon to fulfill his own?

  The second thing Sun Wolf realized was that, like a cruel child, Altiokis was simply telling him this, not to learn any information, but in order to see him break. He knew from his own experience that a screaming victim was more satisfactory to watch. He did not doubt for a moment that they would get down to the screaming sooner or later, but he was damned to the Cold Hells if he’d give the Wizard King that pleasure now.

  Altiokis’ face changed. “Or I could give you worse,” he snarled. He snapped his fingers for the Dark Eagle and his men. “Downstairs,” he ordered. “With me.”

  The mercenaries closed in around Sun Wolf, dragging at his wrist chains, thrusting from behind with their swords. A door opened in the wall, where no door had been; the blue brimfire that floated over Altiokis’ head illuminated the first steps of a stair that curved down into darkness. The Wolf balked in sudden terror at the power, the evil, that rose like a nauseating stench from the pit below. The blackness seemed filled with an alien, hideous chill, like that from the demons he had seen in the marshes of his childhood—a sensation of seeing something that had risen from unknowable gulfs of nothingness, a sensing of something that was not of this earth.

  Someone shoved a blade against his ribs, pushing him through the door. The soldiers seemed unaware of what lay below; they could not know what he knew and still be willing to go that way themselves. He almost turned to fight them in the doorway, but Altiokis reached forward with his staff and used the glowing head of it to drive the Wolf forward down the stairs. The men surrounded him again, and the eldritch cold rose about them as they descended.

  The descent was less far than he had thought. The stair made one circle, then leveled out; the floor, he saw, was rock and dirt. They must be at ground level, at what had been the top of the crag, close to the cliff’s edge. At the end of the short, lightless vault of the hallway was a small door. Even as his soul shrank from it, he thought, I have done this before.

  The room beyond was like the one Derroug Dru had shown him in the prison below the Records Office in Mandrigyn. It was small and dank, furnished with a huge, carved chair
whose black velvet cushions boasted bullion tassels. The white glow of the witchlight gleamed oilily on the wall of glass before the chair. The only difference from that other chamber was that there was a door beside the wide window that looked into darkness.

  Something like a restless flake of fire moved in that dark beyond the glass.

  Sun Wolf had known this was coming to him, all the long road up the mountain. In a way, he had known it since Derroug Dru had first shown the abominations that Altiokis had given him, in the cell beneath the Records Offices. Horror went through the Wolf like a sword of ice; horror and despair and the terrified consciousness that in that room, not in the fat man chuckling throatily beside him, lay the centerpoint of the evil power that pervaded the Citadel. Whatever was in there, it was the source, not only of the creatures that turned men into nuuwa, but of the power that had let Altiokis become the swollen and abominable thing that he was.

  Behind the glass, the bright flake of fire zagged idly in the air, leaving a thin fire trail in the stygian dark. It was waiting for him, waiting to devour his brain, to make him one of the mewing, slobbering things that were filled, like the dead stones of the Citadel, with Altiokis’ perverted will.

  Swords pressed into Sun Wolf’s back, forcing him toward the narrow door. All of his senses seemed to have dulled and concentrated; he was conscious of no sound but the frantic hammering of his own heart and of no sensation but the cold of sweat pouring down his face and breast and arms. The sharpness of the steel was driving him forward. His vision had shrunk to that idle flake of fire, to the dark door, triple-barred with iron, and to the hands of the men unbarring it.