by Lyndon Hardy
“Seascapes, castles, interiors of a palace.” He whirled toward Farnel. “Other settings. Can we quickly assemble such properties as well?”
“I have a few stored at the hall from previous years.” Farnel shrugged. “And so do my peers. We trade them back and forth as we have need.”
“Then let us go and select the best.” Jemidon waved at the outline on the walls. “We have until morning to find a substitute for them all.”
“But there is no time for me to learn a whole new set of charms,” Delia protested. “And they might fail just as surely as the few that I know.”
“Practice only what Farnel has taught you,” Jemidon said. “You need worry about no more. Your performance tomorrow still must be flawless. Indeed, it remains our hope for winning the prize and keeping our freedom.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Purging Flame
JEMIDON flung open the door to Farnel’s hut. Even though he had not stopped to rest since he had instructed Delia to get some sleep, everything was still not quite ready. He looked anxiously at the brightening sky and hurried through the debris that littered the floor between him and the sorcerer’s bed. Gently he shook Delia awake.
“It took longer than we thought,” he said. “Some of the other sorcerers did not take kindly to Farnel’s requests in the middle of the night. He is at the hall trying to put into order what we have already collected.”
Delia rose to sitting and stretched. “The list I made for master Farnel before you left,” she said after a long yawn. “Did you use it to ensure that a scene was found for each charmlet?”
“Farnel worried about the details.” Jemidon shrugged. “For my part, the basic concept was enough.”
“Without a plan and attention as things progress, the most brilliant insight produces nothing.” Delia shook her head. “My fear of Drandor was overwhelming, yet I did not attempt to flee until I had decided exactly what I would take and knew when he would be preoccupied.”
“But despite that, if I had not been on the cliff, you would not have the chance you do now,” Jemidon said.
“If not you, then I would have found some other.”
Jemidon frowned. Delia laughed as his face clouded over. She stood and smiled. “Indeed you were the one. And please do not think that I am ungrateful.”
With a fluid motion, she suddenly clasped her arms around his neck and pulled his lips to hers. Jemidon blinked in surprise, but then felt his pulse quicken. He stepped forward and drew her close. For a long moment they embraced. Jemidon’s thoughts of sorcery faded away. Bodies pressed together, he pushed her toward the bed.
Delia teetered for half a step and then suddenly stiffened. “No,” she whispered, “that is not what I meant.”
Jemidon stroked his hand down her back, pressing her tighter. He thrust his legs against hers, forcing her another step backward.
“No!” She wrenched her face away and pushed down on his entwining arm. “I have given you all I meant to offer.”
Jemidon stopped. He backed away as she smoothed the front of her gown. He looked at the hard lines that had replaced her smile and shook his head. “With the bracelet of iron, surely there have been many,” he said. “And after your invitation, what was I to think?”
Delia opened her mouth to speak and then snapped it shut. Jemidon saw the anger that flared out of her eyes and twitched the muscles in her cheeks.
“Gambling in the token markets was a choice I made freely,” Delia sputtered at last. “And I admit that I knew what the consequences could be.” She waved her arm with the bracelet in Jemidon’s face. “But despite this, I am still more than a toy to be pawed by an owner and then passed to another when he grows tired. That is my past, not what I will be.”
“I have no legal claim over you,” Jemidon cut in quickly.
“Nor am I some doxy from the sagas who swoons to do every bidding of her rescuer in boundless gratitude,” Delia rushed on, “I am free-willed as much as you. I asked for your help. You gave it without qualification. And I have thanked you. My obligation goes no further.”
“A weakness of the moment,” Jemidon said thickly, turning away his eyes. He felt foolish that he had misjudged her intent and relied too strongly on some ill-defined feeling that now he could not quite describe. And what would she think of him? Probably as a bumbling tyro from the wheatlands, who thought with his loins rather than his head, or an apprentice puffed with vanity, so sure of his attractiveness that he did not bother to ask.
Jemidon frowned at the direction of his thoughts. And if she did, why was it so important? If Farnel’s production won the competition, she would be free to go her own way. After that, could it any longer matter?
For a long moment, there was a heavy silence. “Perhaps if I did not indeed wear the bracelet,” Delia said at last, “then the feelings that mold me might be different. But the ring of iron is the reality; I cannot deny all the rest that has happened because of it. I feel a bonding to you, Jemidon, but not like that.” Her cheeks colored slightly. “At least not now, not yet.”
“We still have business together.” Jemidon looked back after a moment, trying to speak as if nothing had happened. “For now, our fates are intertwined. And we must rush. Gerilac has already started. Drandor is ready to be second. And the other masters have made it quite clear: if we are not prepared in time, our chance will be forfeited.”
“Then let us be off,” Delia said. “A meal can come later.”
Jemidon started to say more, but hesitated. The moment had passed. There was too much yet to be done. Without speaking, he turned for the door. In a short while, they were on the path of crushed white stones, walking swiftly to the presentation hall.
Rose-tinted clouds hung low over the hilltops in the center of the island, while the sky above the harbor was just beginning to show its blue. Canthor’s banners hung limply from his keep, and beyond it, the details of the hall were muted in shadow. The faint groan of rigging in the harbor mixed with the crunch of their rapid footsteps on the rock, but otherwise the air hung heavy with the morning silence.
“They expect Drandor to be finished when the sun tops that ridge.” Jemidon nodded to the east. “There barely will be enough time to get you in the well. But with my sliding about the scenery, I could come for you no sooner.”
“I still do not quite understand,” Delia said as they hurried along. “The scenery is supposed to be an aid to help the sorcerer cast his spell. An aid to put the watcher in the proper frame of mind. We were working with helmets and pikes, swords and battle-axes, to suggest battle scenes. Now you have replaced them with wavecaps and fogs, totally unrelated to what I will chant.”
“Precisely the point,” Jemidon said. “The more divergence, the better our chances will be. You see—”
He stopped suddenly and pointed ahead to the hall. “Look, waiting at the stage doorway are some robes of brown. Hurry, we can ill afford delay when dealing with Gerilac’s tyros.”
Jemidon grabbed Delia’s hand, as he had done on the granite cliff, and sprang into a run. Together, they covered the remaining distance in a rush. As they approached the stage entrance, Jemidon recognized Erid and the others, standing with studied nonchalance in the frame of the door.
“Faster, faster,” Erid shouted as they drew close. “I want to see your expressions when your entry is barred.”
In response, Jemidon put on a burst of speed, tugging on Delia’s arm. But she gasped and stumbled; reluctantly, he slowed his pace.
For a moment more, Erid watched without moving. Then, when they were about fifty paces away, he and the other tyros sprang back into the hall and slammed the doors. Jemidon heard the bar drop with a heavy thud.
“The patrons’ entrance,” Jemidon said. “Before they can secure it as well. Somehow we will work our way back to the stage.”
Delia nodded, and they quickly circled the hall. Seen from the front, wings of unlike design jogged away from the central structure, one sprouting tw
in towers at its far end, the other a staggered tier of small boxes. Four doors cut the entrance facade, each one grander than the one adjacent, the last filling an archway twice the height of a man. Together, Jemidon and Delia bounded from the rock path and through the largest entryway into the hall.
Immediately they plunged into dimness. Two candles in a wall sconce illuminated three identical doors and a single staircase leading off to the right. Delia ran forward to try one of the latches, but Jemidon pulled her back.
“No, let’s try upstairs,” he said. “These probably all lead into the Maze of Partitions on the first floor. It would take who knows how long to work our way through to the stage. Perhaps in a balcony we can find a faster way around.”
They raced upstairs and found a long corridor snaking off to the left. The wall nearest the stage was lined with doorways and elaborate portals that opened onto boxes beyond. Jemidon poked his head in one and saw that it was completely empty, the far wall hung with shutters that had been pulled firmly closed. In the next were lavish furnishings, couches with gilded frameworks, and deep floor cushions of shiny silk.
“Come along,” Jemidon shouted as he withdrew. “These probably all open onto a balcony above the Maze. Let’s follow the corridor to the end. There should be another stairway there.”
Running faster on the smooth floors than they had been able to do outside, Jemidon and Delia traversed the straight runs of the passageway and followed the bends that wound about the outer wall of the hall. Finally they reached a barrier of brick and stone that blocked them from going further. In growing desperation, they looked for another exit, either up or down, but found none.
“By the laws, it is too late to retrace our steps back to the entrance and try again,” Jemidon said. He grabbed savagely at the closed door on the last box in line and tried to wrench it open. The thin wood creaked, bowing from the jamb, but bolts at the top and bottom set from the inside held it in place. Tendrils of cold air whiffed from the crack as the door sprang back.
“Someone is in there!” Jemidon exclaimed. “Who could it be? All of the masters will be in the first row, and these presentations are for no others.”
“Does it matter?” Delia asked. “I thought our goal was to get me to the well.”
Jemidon grunted and tried the door on the next box adjacent to the one that was sealed. It flew open. With no better plan in mind, he motioned Delia to follow him in.
The interior was decorated more luxuriously than most, with patterned draperies hanging on three sides and even a painting on the closed shutters facing the stage. Lighted cressets brimmed with scented oil, and additional bottles stood amidst sand buckets underneath.
Jemidon climbed over a down-filled bed in the middle of the room and flicked at the latches on the shutters, pushing them open to look out onto the lower floor of the hall. His eyes swept the stage, and he suddenly stopped in mid-glance.
“It is like what I saw the night of the storm,” he said. “But this time Drandor has made it much more real.”
The trader had tilted a mirror over the chanting well. The light that arched upward did not project throughout the hail, but reflected horizontally onto a curtain that hung from the stage. On its surface, Jemidon saw a scene that moved and changed as he watched. From some impossibly high vantage point, he viewed the offshore islands of Arcadia, sparkling in the sea like pearls on a string. Then, in a breathtaking dive, the islands grew and moved from the center of focus to vanish off the edges of the screen. Morgana remained in view, swelling larger with each instant. The hills, the harbor, and the individual buildings resolved into recognition. The detail was not that of a sorcerer’s illusion or even of a good painting, Jemidon knew; but somehow the production was compelling, drawing him in so that he could not turn aside. He felt like a hawk swooping on its prey, expecting any minute to see a small rodent scamper among individual tufts of grass.
With a stomach-screeching “turn,” Jemidon felt himself stop the plummet and reverse direction above the highest tower of the presentation hall. He raced over the peak with only inches to spare. He banked to the side and glided for a pass over the harbor. With a final turn away from a setting sun, he sailed from the island in a growing twilight.
The first row of the lower level which contained the masters burst into an incoherent babble. Jemidon blinked his thoughts back to attention and saw Drandor emerge from the well with his smile at its widest.
“Most interesting.” The sorcerer on the right rose to greet him. He stepped past the small table with the open scroll and bulging bag of coins. “These glamours do not have the detail, but if I had to decide between yours and what I saw of Gerilac’s today, my choice would be clear.”
“Intriguing, I agree,” the next in line said, “but should not master Gerilac be given the benefit of the doubt? We all have seen his Women of the Slave Quarter before. The high prince himself whispered that he enjoyed it well.”
“You are to judge only what you see now.” Drandor’s smile melted away. “Past performances were not to be a factor.”
“But it is so little time from our celebration,” the second sorcerer continued. “Like us all, master Gerilac was not fully rested. It is no wonder he was unable to weave again the splendid glamour that we enjoyed so well when the prince was here.”
“You have seen two performances,” Drandor insisted. “It is no concern of mine that the other did not match its expectations.” The trader looked about the hall. “And if the last does not start immediately, then we should waste no more time and proceed to your vote.”
“A moment more,” Farnel called out from backstage. “My tyros will arrive shortly.”
“The vote,” Drandor repeated, and several masters nodded their heads in agreement.
Jemidon tore his eyes away from the stage and finally looked down to the floor. “There,” he exclaimed. “From our vantage point, we can see a path below the long tapestry on the left, a narrow walkway that winds to the front of the hall.”
He turned back into the box and grabbed the nearest draperies from their hangings. While the masters argued, he tied several together and threw one end of a makeshift rope over the shutter rail. Delia nodded understanding. With Jemidon bracing against her weight, she shimmied down its length to land on the floor below. She paused and looked up expectantly, but he waved her on, holding up the free end of the drapery still in his hands. As she sped onto the walkway, he glanced back into the box, looking for a means to anchor his own way down.
While he tested the weight of the bed and tried to maneuver it into a position so that it would not slide, the agitation of the masters increased as more joined in the debate.
“But we agreed to three,” one shouted above the rest.
“It does not matter,” another answered. “Farnel has not yet started and has forfeited his chance. Let us vote and then be done.”
Other voices blurred the argument into indistinction, but then suddenly Delia’s clear tones cut through them all. Her words pulsed with energy, crystal sharp and demanding attention, filling the expanse of the hall. Not strained or forced, they carried rich harmonics of mystery and allure.
For a moment, the babble rumbled onward. Then, one by one, the masters stopped to listen, their own voices quickly hushed when they became aware of what they heard. Like enraptured children, they settled back into their seats, concentrating on the charm.
Delia ran through the first glamour with the same skill she had exhibited in Farnel’s hut. The spell for Dark Clouds blended smoothly into that for Clinton’s Granite Spires. As she reached the last syllables, the stage curtains parted in darkness. Then, with the final word, the scene behind sprang to life. Jemidon dropped the drapery and returned to the open shutters to watch what the reaction would be.
On the stage, a two-masted sloop, its sails billowing from offstage fans, frothed in a shallow sea. Bellow-driven sprays dashed against canvas boulders. The largest rock was topped by a light that swept in slow circle
s and caught the dust that churned in the main vault of the hall.
Then, as quickly as the scene had appeared, the stage returned to blackness and Delia started the next portion of the charm. An excited murmur started to swell along the masters’ row. Jemidon smiled. It was working as he had thought. The sorcerers could not have doubted that Delia’s words would produce images of the mountains surrounded by high clouds. Her voice was too pure. And to see scenes of the ocean instead had to be an intriguing surprise.
“But that is no sorcery,” Jemidon heard Drandor shout. “I have made sure that there is none. I am the one who must win. By logic’s laws, there can be no other way!”
Louder hisses for silence drowned out the trader. Except for Delia’s voice, the hall quieted like a wizard’s tomb. The masters sat attentively now, anxious to see what the next images would be. Drandor stomped his foot in frustration and looked up in Jemidon’s direction to the box on his left.
For a moment, nothing happened in response. Only Delia’s voice filled the expanses of the hall. Then, as the curtains began to part for a second time, the shutters on the next box banged open loudly and a bottle of oil sailed out to crash onto the walkway immediately below. A lighted torch followed and, in a flash, the long wall tapestry burst into flame.
Two more bottles hurled from the opening and shattered like the first. A brace of torches scattered over a wide arc. In two heartbeats, the first level was ablaze with half a dozen fires.
Jemidon looked back at the doorway and then to Delia, still chanting in the well. He threw the drapery aside and impulsively climbed up onto the ledge. Without pausing to take aim, he vaulted from his perch.
The momentum of his kick carried him past the walkway directly below. He crashed through a thin panel canopy, hit a pillowed divan, and tumbled to the floor. He staggered to his feet and looked about to catch his bearings. The sorcerers were aflutter. They had seen the fire, and Delia’s voice no longer held them in thrall. Like huge black birds, they ran in all directions, tripping over buckets and shouting commands.