by Lyndon Hardy
The roar of the falling rock became deafening as they reached the first of the cages. Without dwelling on how close they were falling, Jemidon thrust Delia inside and snapped shut the belt around her waist. “Keep your arms and legs inside the bars,” he yelled. “Hope that the chains prevent you from slamming into the sides.”
He turned to grab Burdon’s tunic as the old man tumbled past, completely out of control from the motion of the dancing mountain. “Into the next,” he shouted, jumping out of the way as a large rock sailed past his shoulder and then bounced off the bars of Delia’s cage. Without looking to see how the lord fared, Jemidon dove for the last cage in the cluster. Fingers suddenly numb and unresponsive slid on the belt. He curled into a ball as best he could.
Just as he did, the wave of dust engulfed him completely. Small pebbles and rocks sailed through the bars and struck his head and back, producing painful welts. Larger rocks clanged off the bars and continued down the slope. A huge boulder crashed into one end of the cage and spun it around. A second hit broadside, bending the bars with a shriek of protesting metal.
The hail of crashing rock became a torrent. Like a tropical cloudburst, the tap and clang merged into a continuous stream of sound. The larger stones shook the cage with gut-wrenching jolts. Twice more, the metal box jarred from where it was poised and then, under the nudge of a boulder, it joined the stream tumbling end over end, another piece of debris in the sweeping storm.
Jemidon gasped from the tugs of the belt. He shut his eyes to block out the dust and the swirl of rock. All sense of orientation vanished in the dizzying tumble. He was barely aware of the cries of men and shrieks of horses as the avalanche roared through their lines.
Then, as suddenly as it had began, the tumbling stopped. A sudden quiet replaced the roaring cascade. Jemidon opened his eyes and peered through the dust. His cage was upended in a pile of granite, one end crushed within inches of his head and the steel ceiling plate dented with pits a foot across. He reached out and grabbed a bar to steady the whirl in his eyes. After a few moments, he was able to release the grip of the belt and scramble out onto the mound of stones.
He blinked in dust-sprayed sunlight. Where there once had been an army was now an area marked only by a few shards of mail scattered amidst the piles of rubble. To his left, Jemidon saw what remained of the rows of catapults. Half were splintery rubbish; on others, thick-beamed spars dangled like broken limbs. All were immersed in a sea of stone that extended farther back onto the plain.
One or two of the machines had survived unscathed. Jemidon saw the thaumaturges hastily cranking back the great arms to release their flights in retaliation.
“Wait, wait,” he heard one yell. “The incantation. Something is wrong. The small sliver is not still bound with the whole. Sympathy and contagion. They no longer seem to work.”
Jemidon clutched his arms around his stomach and turned his attention back up the mountainside. After the harvesting had stopped, Kenton’s throwing engines were all that remained of thaumaturgy. For Melizar, that had been enough for the uncoupling. Now even they were stilled.
Jemidon looked across the slope through the haze and saw what he thought was Burdon climb out of his cage and limp off into the distance. He searched the rubble for signs of Delia and sucked in his breath when he glimpsed a few twisted bars poking out from beneath a boulder the size of a small hut. He ran to examine the wreckage, not daring to think of what he might find.
As he drew closer to the monolith that must have crushed flat whatever stood in its way, he heard a faint, high-pitched hum and the squeak of a tiny voice.
“The time has already been many seconds. At this distance, I can remain no more. I must return and fulfill the obligations to my master. I am to maintain the void under the tent. Little else do I have leave to do.”
Jemidon ran around the rock and blinked at what he saw, Delia was huddled in a small ball inside a shimmering transparent sphere that was centered around the rockbubbler sprite.
“Nevertheless, you have saved my life,” Delia told the demon. “You see where the cage came to rest in the monolith’s path. There was barely enough time to get out and call for your aid before it hit.”
“Your thoughts were compelling and clear.” The sprite unfolded its arms from its chest. “I do not understand truly what made me come. But no matter. In a few heartbeats more, I must—”
The imp stopped, and then a spasm ran through its body. “The packing of the spheres has shifted. The others have told. My true master calls. He has been awakened and commands that I return.” The demon closed its eyes and slowly pivoted, pointing a thin arm up to the ledge from which it had come. “See, he walks among you mortals and has summoned another to do his bidding as well.”
Jemidon looked up the mountainside. The rebels were quiet, stunned by the awesome power of the avalanche. He saw a small flash of white-hot flame that suddenly cut through the swirling dust and then a blur of motion, fiery oranges and burning reds. As he watched, the patch of color soared up into the air. In a breathtaking glide, it arched down to where he and Delia stood.
“A djinn!” the rockbubbler shrieked. “Master, have pity on one who has honored the letter of your law. I have kept open the void under the tent. I left only when the others were so positioned that I contributed nothing to the total volume.”
Jemidon watched as the dance of color formed into a large demon. Unlike the sprite, its limbs were full and bulging with muscle. Thick, overlapping scales covered its entire body, except for the tenuous membranes of bat-like wings and the pockmarked cheeks and forehead. Without effort, it descended from the sky, its long tail dangling far below its cloven hooves, testing the ground for a place to land.
Jemidon followed the trajectory with a mixture of fascination and dread. “Not since the agreement between the archmage and the demon prince has one been summoned,” he muttered. “The wizard who conjured him is a fool or a true master indeed.”
As it grew closer, Jemidon saw that the djinn carried a bundle in each arm. One was dark-cloaked Melizar, the other a manipulant, now fully alert.
“Have him release me.” Melizar coughed as they settled to the ground. “A moment of heat will not destroy you. For months, you have been peacefully resting. It is only fair that you should carry some of the hardships as well.”
The manipulant motioned with his arms and then collapsed to the ground as the djinn released its grip. Melizar momentarily staggered, but quickly regained his balance and drew himself to full height. He looked at the cowering sprite that had moved away from Delia and then pointed at Jemidon.
“In the grotto, at the pass, and now even one of my manipulant’s sprites you have subverted,” he said quietly. “Your persistence begins to mark you as a captive of some quality. Perhaps I judged too quickly in placing you in the pit. Your marrow should touch the lips of no less than the first among the pilots.”
Jemidon grabbed Delia and closed his fist defiantly. “Numb us again if you will,” he heard himself say. “Somehow, we shall escape as we did before.”
“Apparently the torpordust is insufficient for one such as you,” Melizar said. “That you have already demonstrated.” He waved his cloaked arm through the air. “But now there are only alchemy and wizardry left. I will meet this so-called archmage of yours, and then the victory will be complete. You will be the first I will savor when I have gained control of them all. In the meantime, I will place you where I can be more sure you will stay.”
Melizar kicked the manipulant huddled at his side. “Send them away. Back whence we came.”
Jemidon tensed as the figure on the ground somehow managed to start a small fire from implements tucked into the waist of his loincloth. He tried to ignore the sense of helplessness that welled up within him. He faced no less than a long-tailed djinn that could slice him in two with the snap of its claws. No mortal who was not its master could stand against one. There was no point in even trying to resist. With round eyes, he watch
ed the demon step forward and spread its blood-red wings. As its arms closed around him and Delia, the smell of burning sulfur made him gag.
“Elsewhere,” he heard Melizar’s muffled command. “Send them through the flames to elsewhere. Let him see if he can fare in my domain as well as I have in his.”
PART FOUR
The Verity of Exclusion
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Skysoar
JEMIDON could not judge the passage of time. There was a moment of disorientation and then he heard sharp cries of surprise. The wings of the djinn unfurled. As quickly as it had engulfed them, the demon stepped back into the flame and vanished.
A blast of numbing cold air ripped at Jemidon’s uncovered hands and eyes. A sense of weightlessness rose from his stomach; his feet slowly left the ground. He looked up and blinked. He was surrounded by a vast expanse of reddish sky, not the robust oranges of sunset reflected in clouds, but a soft color that washed from horizon to horizon, full of a diffuse light for which no source could be seen. In the far distance, spanning completely across the ruddy glow, were dim hints of long, straight lines, a trellis of triangles like the facets of a gem.
Where were they? It was a scene that could not possibly exist in the experience of man. Everything was alien—the colors, the smell of the air, and the sound of the whistling wind. The shock hammered at Jemidon’s senses and froze him in place, a mute statue totally without comprehension of what he saw.
A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. He was thrust into a shallow pit carved from solid rock and saw Delia pushed to his side. Long, slender fingers pointed to small indentations in the walls, and he understood what to do. Gripping tightly with his hands and feet, he prevented himself from floating away.
For the longest time, Jemidon remained huddled in the pit, pressing against Delia to share her warmth and feeling the wind whip over his back. He kept his eyes screwed shut, all muscles tensed to lock him into position, not wanting to move, trying to will away what he had seen as part of a flawed glamour. But the thought of what really must have happened bubbled in his mind, gathering strength and dripping with desolation and helplessness.
Finally Jemidon had to be sure. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and looked about. He saw about a dozen figures, dressed only in loincloths like Melizar’s manipulants, huddling in depressions similar to his own. They were arrayed in a circle about a deeper pit that contained the last flickers of the fire, a complex linkage of mirrors, and a flat tablelike stone with strange glyphs marked around the periphery.
Like Melizar’s manipulants! His sagging spirits plummeted with the thought. Like Melizar himself! Here the beings appeared to move about in comfort, to be the norm. He and Delia were the exceptions, the outcasts trapped far away from home. The strange one indeed had made good his threat.
“Where are we?” Delia came to life at his side. “Is this the realm of demons, the world behind the flames?”
Jemidon looked to the horizon. They seemed to be on the top of a rocky mound; the terrain fell away in all directions. But the proportions were all wrong. There was nothing in the distance beyond the curve of the hill, no plain stretching away or other mountains, only reddish sky and the distant lines.
“It is totally unlike what the wizards have recorded in the sagas,” Jemidon said. “But I fear that, for us, it will make little difference.”
Jemidon looked again at the men clustered about them. They talked in a soft chittering and ignored him completely. In the pit with the tablestone, one obviously older than the rest and cloaked in gray spoke in hoarse whispers, gesturing commands. His sleek black hair had turned pale, and deep wrinkles furrowed a caved-in face. Pus ran from one half-closed eye. With a gnarled hand, he idly fingered the bead at one of the vertices of a lattice. It was like Melizar’s, although it was far less complex.
Beyond the large pit stood a scaffolding and next to it a line of crudely built wagons, wheels of solid wood and tongues with handholds rather than yokes. Behind them were several hoists, complicated constructions of levers, pulleys, and slings. Shovels and coarse woven sacks were piled everywhere, battened down under tightly stretched nets.
Farther to the right, at the end of what might be a safety rope, looped through a series of metal eyes, was a large indentation in the rock. When Jemidon craned his neck, he could see steps leading down into an interior and the hint of torchlight casting dull shadows on the roughly hewn granite. Except for these features, all else was bare rock, a gently curving expanse with sharp ridges hammered and polished away, the texture of the sea frozen in sculpture’s stone.
The old one gestured dramatically at the horizon. Jemidon turned his head and saw a new line of hills where there had been none before. And as he watched, the crestline grew taller and extended farther to both sides. The undulations of the peaks were ripples on a more gentle curve that bowed up into the sky. For a moment Jemidon was puzzled by what he was seeing, but in a few seconds more, the rising ground began to fill his view. In a flash he understood where he was. They were riding a boulder, a large one to be sure, over a thousand feet in diameter from what he could see, but no more than a mere hunk of rock, slowly rotating and hurtling toward the ground.
Jemidon realized dimly that he should have some reaction to the impending collision, at least a sudden flash of anxiety from the primitive fear of falling, but he felt instead only the huge weight of his increasing despair. Almost dispassionately, he saw the growing details of ragged peaks and scarred valleys as they closed. Here and there were small craters, and in other places long slashes gouged the surface. He looked back at the men. Calmly they went about their tasks, seemingly oblivious to the danger of a collision. Two sighted the approaching body through a telescope and sextant, while another moved small markers around the edge of the tablestone in response to what they called out. A fourth reached from his pit and placed two pale blue stones onto the tabletop, each the size of a fist. Through his good eye, the old one squinted up at the approaching sphere. He glanced at the markers the others adjusted around the periphery of the stone and nodded. Reaching into his loincloth, he removed a small pyramid, each side covered with variously colored triangles much like Melizar’s cube.
The old one twisted the faces of the solid, and Jemidon suddenly felt his stomach contract, almost anticipating what he would feel. The sense of letting go and drifting built in an instant, overwhelming even his sense of defeat. In his mind’s eye, the rush of motion increased in intensity and began to whip him along at a hurricane’s pace. Fanciful convolutions of shape and color streaked by in a blinding blur. But despite the speed, surprisingly, his disorientation was not great. He felt less need than before to fight the flow, to lash out and grab for any anchor as it sped past. He watched instead the swirl of meaningless flotsam about him and concentrated on the box he visualized in the distance, the box he had imagined before, the box slowly opening its lid and tipping to spill out its secrets.
The old one wiped the pus from his eye. He squinted at the approaching ground. While a manipulant began to push the blue stones apart, he leaned forward, extending his arms to surround them with his flesh. Suddenly there was a ground-wrenching lurch, a groan in the granite that vibrated the entire mass on which they rode. Jemidon felt a deceleration, a resistance in the direction in which they sped. The inner sense of a mad rush was just as suddenly gone, leaving unmasked only the dull weight of his failure to escape from Melizar.
The old one twisted his pyramid a second time, and another of the attendants performed complex motions on the tabletop, this time with sparkling crystals of pale violet. Again Jemidon felt the inner rush and the shudder of the boulder as it responded. Craning his neck backward, he saw their rotation slow and the uprushing ground now directly overhead.
The whispering chatter became more intense. The old one worked with his pyramid almost continuously, Jemidon felt a series of short rushes and re-anchorings. Like gambling in a complex game of chance, the manipulants alternately placed s
mall colored stones on the table, maneuvered them briefly under the old one’s hands, and then shoved them away.
Suddenly the one with the sextant waved his arms and all activity stopped. The old one slumped down beside the tablestone, apparently exhausted. Two of the others cautiously rose out of their pits and headed for the scaffolding, Jemidon looked upward to see the ground rushing closer, not quite as fast as it had before. More importantly, it also began moving to the side.
As he watched, the rate of closing became less and less. The lateral motion increased until the features on the ground streaked by in a rush. Finally they seemed to stop falling altogether and flew over the surface at a blistering pace, skimming along over the ground faster than any bird could fly.
For a long moment, nothing happened; then the sextant holder shouted, pointing to the left and far ahead. Jemidon saw the old one direct one more manipulation, and they resumed their descent to the surface. Smaller features resolved as they grew closer, the wrinkles of mountain slopes, the canopy of individual trees. Jemidon held his breath as they skimmed over a small ridge and then above a marshy plain. He recognized the grazing animals that had appeared in Drandor’s initial animation and, stalking them behind the cover of tall grass, the strong-jawed dogs.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a net billow from the scaffolding to catch the wind. Working two-handled cranks, the manipulant at the scaffolding let out enough line so that each end of the net skimmed along the ground. With a hoot of panic, the grazing beasts saw it coming and began to stampede out of its path. The race of the boulder was too swift, however; in an instant, two or three were caught and scooped from their feet. Jemidon heard a soft, tinkling laughter and saw the manipulant next to him beat his thigh with his palm in apparent delight. The crank handles spun, slowly drawing the trapped beasts from the surface up onto the rock.