by Janet Morris
BEYOND WIZARDWALL
JANET MORRIS
Contents
Book One: Token of the God
Book Two: Fete Week
Book Three: Beyond the Veil
Book Four: Festival of Man
Book Five: Winners' Day
Book One:
TOKEN OF THE GOD
The young officer's face was shiny with sweat, his eyes closed, his back against the stallboards. In his lap lay the head of his pregnant sorrel mare, exhausted and blowing hard from her long labor.
The straw around them was fouled from her water and scattered from her struggles, but the Trôs foal she carried remained unborn.
Niko's mare wouldn't let anyone else in the stall with her and Niko was no closer to grabbing the unborn foal's hooves and pulling it from her womb than he'd been before nightfall.
Outside a snowstorm raged but, in the stall, mare and master were hot and thirsty. He'd been drunk when one of the Stepsons from his unit had come to fetch him at Brother Bomba's in Peace Falls—as drunk and drugged as he could manage, keeping his thoughts at bay.
Heavy snows had put the war against Mygdonia and its Nisibisi wizards into hiatus; magic had been employed by Niko's commander, Tempus, to bring his mixed cadre of shock troops (Rankan 3rd Commando rangers, Tysian "specials," guerrilla hillmen of Free Nisibis, and Niko's own unit of Stepsons) back to Tyse for the winter. Though the fighting had ended inconclusively, with the Mygdonian warlord Ajami still at large, Tempus's joint forces had declared themselves victorious—they'd won the battle, if not the war. They'd ridden through a tunnel of cloud and into Tyse triumphant and had settled down to wait for spring, content, all but for Niko, with the season's work.
But then, no other fighter in the Stepsons had Niko's problems: he was the only member of its core group of Sacred Band pairs who had a wizard for a partner, a witch for an enemy, and a dream lord after his very soul.
He hoped his mare's plight wasn't a matter of magical intervention, some reflection of the accursed luck that had dogged him ever since he'd joined Tempus's private army. He couldn't bear it if her suffering turned out to be his fault.
All Niko had left which mattered to him was this mare, who looked up at him from anguished, exhausted eyes that still were trusting: she expected him to be able to save her.
Full of despair, he rubbed her muzzle, then scratched a favorite spot under her jaw. He couldn't do much more than sit with her until she died. He couldn't help her; he couldn't even help himself.
Suddenly she shuddered and started thrashing. He tried to hold her head. She was tearing herself up inside; the foal was in breech. The vet had told him to put her out of her misery, hopeful of saving the foal, which was half Trôs horse and worth more than its mother.
But he couldn't do it. He couldn't walk away and let someone else do it either. The remnants of honorbond within him, reduced to that between man and horse, wouldn't allow him to sacrfice the sorrel mare, all he had left from his life before he'd joined the Stepsons.
And he couldn't hold her, couldn't even keep her from hurting herself. He watched helplessly, his eyes filled with tears, as she groaned and bit herself, then sank back, exhausted, blowing hard through distended nostrils.
He could save her, if he went crawling to the mageguild and begged his estranged partner, Randal the Tysian wizard, to help him. He could probably make it there in time. The storm outside was winter's last; he could take one of his commander's uncannily powerful Aŝkelonian horses and ride down across the Nisibisi border into Tyse, find Randal, and trade the last bit of his self-esteem for the sorrel mare's life.
Even if it didn't work, if he couldn't reach the mageguild in time, he'd be out of here—he wouldn't have to watch her die.
The mare twitched weakly, gave a long, sighing snort, and rolled her eyes at him pleadingly. She was soaked in sweat and so was he.
"It'll be all right," he lied to her. Her ears pricked at the sound of his voice.
Digging with trembling fingers in his beltpouch, he found his drugs and sniffed the last of his krrf. It wasn't going to make him feel any better, he knew, but it would give him the energy to do the cowardly thing and get the hell out of here before he broke down in tears.
As the drug seeped from his nose into his brain, he got his legs under him and pushed himself up. The mare was watching him as he sidled toward the door, so he said, "You just rest. I'm going to get help. I'll be right back…"
Outside the stall, he closed its door and leaned his forehead on it, swearing softly in gutter-Nisi.
He was still standing like that when he heard low voices and the rustle of winter uniforms coming toward him in the quiet stable's gloom.
"We've got to do something about him," one voice said. "It's bad for morale, discipline… we can't just sit back and let him go on this way. It makes the whole unit look bad."
A deeper voice responded, "What would you suggest, Crit?"
"Either shape him up or shed him. If it were anybody else, you'd have done it long ago. He's just not that special—and if he is, that's worse. You can't have one set of rules for Niko and another for everybody else. Even the Sacred Banders don't try to make excuses for him anymore. You've got to talk to him."
The other sighed rattlingly and said something so low that Niko couldn't hear the words as he turned to watch Tempus and his second-in-command, Critias, come down the line.
By the time they reached him, the words he'd heard and the drugs in his system had combined to make Niko's greeting abrupt: "If you're here to kill my mare to save the foal, you'll have to kill me first." He crossed his arms and stood his ground.
Crit was about Niko's size. Tempus was taller and heavier and insurmountable: the Stepsons' commander was undying, a quasi-immortal as strong as a bull whose flesh regenerated itself and whose fighting skills had been honed through centuries on a multitude of battlefields.
It might be an acceptable way to die, picking a fight with the commander of the allied Tysian militias; it wasn't a fight that Niko, despite his western training, could hope to win, and both his superiors knew it.
Crit said, "See what I mean, Commander? The bastard's addled—dangerous to himself and the rest of us. Suicide's not an honorable—"
"Crit, go tell Randal he can come now," Tempus ordered flatly.
Crit ran a hand through his short feathery hair and said, "Yes sir, Commander. Niko, when you're done here, I want to see you in my quarters." Then, with a wry grimace, he headed for the barn door.
The young officer and his commander looked at each other in silence until Niko judged that Crit was out of earshot: "Randal's not touching my mare. She's better off dying a natural death than living on, beholden to wizardry." "And you, Stepson," Tempus said gently, "is that what you want?" The man who was called the Riddler stared sorrowfully at the young soldier.
"Maybe. What if it is? It's my choice—the only one I've got left. I never wanted to pair with Randal—a mage, an accursed sorcerer." Niko tried to stop himself, but the words came pouring out: "I can't take it any longer—the other fighters avoid me like a plague-carrier; the Sacred Band pairs say I've violated the spirit of my oath; the Free Nisibisi—even my blood brother Bashir—shun me. I'm a pariah, an outcast in all but name. So let's call it like it is: I quit. I'm out of it, officially resigning my commission. As of this moment, my mare and I are beyond your jurisdiction."
From inside the stall, a grunt of pain and frustration reached them.
Tempus watched the young fighter who had once been so promising but now, haggard, haunted, and hunted by supernatural forces he wouldn't try to understand, teetered on the brink of madness.
"That might be best for all concerned," Tempus said slowly. "But let's end it
properly: you and I should be able to save both mare and foal, if you'll take direction from me this one more time. Then we'll keep the foal and you can take the mare with you when it's weaned."
Niko squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth suddenly dry, feeling as if he'd been disemboweled. At least he'd saved Tempus the painful duty of discharging him. It had to come to this, he told himself. It was just a matter of time.
Yet the shock of being separated from his unit officially was devastating. Numbly he said, "Fine. Let's try it, Tempus," using his civilian prerogative to be impolite to the man he respected above all others.
In the stall, the mare's ears barely twitched; her breathing was too loud, too deep. Her distended belly shivered.
Tempus knelt down beside her hindquarters and took out a dagger.
"No!" Niko protested.
"I'm just going to make her a little wider, Niko. She'll hardly feel it, the state she's in. Sit on her neck and hold her head."
Automatically, the ex-Stepson did as he was bid, one more time. He couldn't see what Tempus was doing behind his back, but he could feel the mare shudder and twitch.
Then she uttered one piercing scream and her forelegs jerked madly as she struggled to roll over, to rise up. Niko had all he could do to obey the order he'd been given.
"Good, good. Hold firm. That's it, Niko," said Tempus, and then added: "Here it comes… that's got it." And: "You can get off her neck. Get me some hot water, cat gut, a hot needle, clean cloths. And… take a look, on your way out."
The straw was full of blood and placenta, but in its midst an iron-black foal kicked shakily. Tempus was wiping the mucus from its nostrils with his tunic's edge and Niko's sorrel mare was trying to help him.
When he left the stall, Niko saw his mare nuzzling her newborn and Tempus, covered with mucus and blood, grinning after him fondly.
Coming back with a bucket of water and an armful of cloths, he met Randal the wizard, slogging through snow up to his bony knees.
"Stealth," Randal called Niko by his war name, "I got your message. Whatever's wrong with her, we'll—" "Randal, I didn't send for you, but I'm glad you're here." The scrawny wizard struggled to keep up. "You are? "That's right. Not because of the mare—Tempus and I took care of that without any magical incantation or soul-rotting spells."
Randal tried not to show his disappointment, the depth of his hurt. Randal idolized Nikodemos, but since coming back from the front, Niko had been treating him very shabbily. Fighters were moody and Niko had been under terrible strain— possessed by a witch, sought after as an earthly avatar by the very entelechy of dreams, banned from the western Bandaran isles for consorting with magicians.
So Randal only said, "I'm glad. The mare's out of danger? And the foal? Then perhaps I should be getting back—"
"No. You'll have to stay awhile. We have to dissolve our pairbond formally. You can do what you want, wizard, but I've quit the Stepsons. There are plenty of fools who'll pair with you for j.tatus and mundane advantage—or Tempus will keep you on as a single, I'm—"
"You what?" Niko was a son of the armies; his unit, with its stringent and convoluted code of honor and its lust for glory, was his entire life. Niko without his rank as squadron leader of the finest special forces unit in the north was like Randal without his guild-standing, or Tempus without his curse: unthinkable.
"You heard me," Niko said. "I'm quit of you and all my former allegiances, after tonight. We'll go see Crit and say the words, sign the papers. Then it's done."
"Done? Don't I have anything to say about—"
Niko glanced at Randal sidelong; in the moonlight reflected from the snow, Niko's stare was so eloquently threatening and so full of distaste that Randal broke off in mid-sentence.
If Stealth, called Nikodemos, had truly lost his taste for honor and glory, if the debauches Randal had heard about from scandalized 3rd Commando regulars had taken its place, then there was nothing Randal could do about it. He was part of Niko's problems, not his solutions.
But he was terribly sad, hurrying after his onetime left-side leader into the Stepson's Hidden Valley barn.
Randal had given up a lot to be able to say "Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory." He saw in Tempus's sad little smile when he spoke those words that he was expected to rise to this occasion, to stay on as Tempus's staff adept, to ask no questions and trust his commander to turn things aright.
But without Niko, it wouldn't be easy.
* 2 *
Randal would never forget the way Critias looked past Niko, as if he didn't exist, when the Stepson submitted his resignation.
Critias, Tempus's intelligence officer, had no right to judge Niko: he didn't understand Niko's problems, didn't care about anything but himself. The Stepsons were a cold lot, clinging to their barbaric honor code in lieu of anything more stringent.
Sour-eyed, Crit had scrawled out release forms for Niko and slapped them down upon his desk: "Come on, hurry up, citizen. I've got better things to do than waste my time with you."
Stealth hadn't batted an eye, just signed what Crit put before him. Randal wanted to give Crit a piece of his mind, but his kris—a magical sword given to the mage by Aŝkelon, lord of dreams— rattled in its scabbard on Randal's hip as if it were ready to jump out and skewer Critias of its own accord. And since the kris was capable of doing just that, Randal had to hold it firmly and keep his temper well in check: his kris couldn't distinguish between real enemies and perceived ones; it was probably just reacting to Randal's confused emotions.
As they were leaving, Straton, Critias's right-side partner and the Stepsons' chief interrogator, came in. Strat, a man as large as Tempus, gave Niko an offhanded salute, disregarding Randal as Strat always did when he could.
Niko just nodded to Straton, who frowned and said, "When are you going to quit fuddling your wits with krrf, Stealth? You can't even manage a civil—"
"Civilians don't salute Stepsons. They're polite and they know their place—somewhere else," Crit said.
"What's this? Another covert operation? Last time Niko played 'civilian," his partner died of the game. I—"
"No game this time, Strat." Niko's voice was soft and slurred from drugs or distress. "My mare stays here till the foal is weaned. I'd like your word that you'll see to her—I'll make it worth your while."
Strat's wide forehead furrowed; he looked from Crit, to Niko, to Randal. Then his big hands lashed out, catching Randal by the tunic and lifting him off the ground: "This is your doing, you droolbucket, you slimy prestidigitator. Couldn't stand it that Stealth was—"
"Strat!" Crit said. "It's too late for that." "Put him down, Straton," Niko warned, "or you won't be able to lift your skirts hereafter." Niko's tone, flat and promissory without a hint of feeling, made Straton turn his head.
Then Randal's feet touched the floor and he could speak. "And don't you forget it, you lumbering—"
"Randal! I don't need any help from you with this." Niko's sunken eyes swept over him and Randal flushed.
Regarding Crit steadily, Niko said, "Let's be polite, ex-task force leader, now and in the future. Someone might get hurt, otherwise."
"Stealth," Straton said, "this is madness. What are you going to do? Deal drugs from Brother Bomba's? Play martyr with Bashir's guerrillas when the snow melts and the Mygdonians attack again?" Niko, still looking at Crit, said, "Something like that. It doesn't matter. Randal, get out of here. Go back to your mageguild and spin your globe. I'll be in touch."
There was more said, Randal was sure, but he didn't hear it. Straton, with an ugly grin, opened the door wide for him and bowed sweepingly. "Out you go, witchy-ears, and I can't say I'm sorry about it."
So he left, his neck hot with embarrassment and his eyes swimming with tears. Stealth wasn't like this; something was wrong—even more than he'd thought.
All the camaraderie and much-vaunted brotherhood of the Sacred Band was meaningless, the whole thing a sham, an excuse for violence and viciousness.
Randal was crunching through the Hidden Valley snow, wondering if he could ever convince his archmage that he'd seen the error of his ways and regain his former standing among the Tysian wizards, when a long shadow fell in his path: Tempus, a dark lord in the moonlight.
"Life to you, Randal," the Stepsons' commander said.
"Don't 'life' me, Riddler," Randal flared, drawing himself up to his full height. "You may think I'm still a member in good standing, but your task force leader has made it clear that I'm not welcome." "Grit's got problems of his own—my daughter."
Kama, for one; relations between the Stepsons and the 3rd Commando, for another."
"That's no excuse." Randal wanted to push by Tempus, find a cozy place to change his shape, and wing homeward: an interval as a hawk would ease him, dull the pain of rejection.
But before he could, Tempus said, "Whatever you said or did in there, as far as I'm concerned, you're still my right-hand mage. And I've a task for you no lesser could accomplish."
"You do? That is, oh no, you don't. Niko quit, so I'm out of it, too."
"An oath means so little to a mage? I doubt it."
Randal's feet were getting cold and, in the moonlight, Tempus seemed some faceless hulk, even more daunting than usual.
"Well . . yes and no," and Hazard temporized. "I mean, if you really need me, then of course I'll do my best but… how? I can't make another liaison; Niko's still my partner, to the death with honor, no matter what he says. It's like a marriage, isn't it? You can disavow it before men but not before… well, you know."
"I know," said the avatar of rape and pillage kindly. "As for how you can help, you can keep Niko safe while this fever in him burns out."
"How? I don't know what's wrong, what I've done, why he doesn't want me anymore…" Randal trailed off miserably, then sniffled, then turned his head to blow his nose: "It's cold out here, Riddler. Could we go inside if we've got to talk much longer?"
When he got no answer, he looked up again, and Tempus was gone.