by John Dalmas
Macurdy put a hand in his jacket pocket. The crystal was distinctly warmer. "They're gaining on us," he said.
«Seemingly.» Vulkan speeded his trot a bit.
Before long they saw a solitary horse ahead, coming toward them with a hithik rider. A courier, apparently. "Stop," Macurdy murmured. "I'm going to steal a horse."
Vulkan stepped off the road and stopped. Macurdy slid from his back, willed his own cloak off, and stood waiting, a powerful figure dressed as a rakutu, with a hand raised in command. The horseman stopped, and Macurdy walked up to him. "Get down," he said roughly in Hithmearcisc. Hoping the order was too brief for his accent to be conspicuous.
With a worried expression, the soldier dismounted, letting the reins hang so the horse would stand. Macurdy stepped up to him and peered intently into his face. Then, as if to see the courier's features more clearly, he removed the man's thick winter cap—and slammed him hard between the eyes with the heel of his hand. The hithu dropped like a stone.
Macurdy turned to Vulkan. "I'm going to load him over your back. Can you keep him on board?"
«Hardly. I can carry him with my tusks, but neither fast nor far. And if he regains consciousness, I'll be unable to kill him. Killing an ensouled being is an act not available to me.»
Macurdy didn't hesitate. His thumb found the man's carotid, and he compressed it with force enough to crack walnuts. After half a minute he released it, and loaded the slack figure across the horse's withers. Then he swung into the saddle, and after recalling his cloak, he and Vulkan continued eastward side by side. A check found the crystal warmer than before. Kurqôsz, Macurdy decided, could run even faster than he'd thought.
Not far ahead they came to a lesser road that crossed Road B. On its surface, not a single track marred the morning's snow. Macurdy stopped. "I suppose," he said, "they can sense the crystal, and that's what they're following."
«I do not doubt it.»
"You turn south. They'll see your tracks, and probably follow them. I'll keep going east a little way, then circle north through the woods and head back to the farm. Where there are nice rock walls."
Vulkan answered by turning south and trotting briskly away through the virgin snow. For Vulkan's information, Macurdy continued his monolog mentally as he continued down the heavily tracked Road B. When they realize they're on a false trail, it should take them awhile to sort things out, and I should be able to keep ahead of them. When I get to the headquarters clearing, I'll head for the woodpile and grab a splitting maul or single bit. Lay the crystal against a stone wall, and smack the sonofabitch.
Then I'll get Varia out of there.
He didn't wonder how. A hundred or so yards farther east, he took advantage of a windthrown hemlock whose top reached the edge of the road. There he turned his horse northward into the woods, walking it along the very edge of the fallen treetop. If Kurqôsz got that far, he was unlikely to see the tracks.
When he'd passed the hemlock's uprooted base, he continued northward a ways, then turned back toward the clearing. He reached the virgin snow of the lesser road where a sleigh trail entered it from the west.
He took it.
* * *
With the help of motion sickness pills, Kurqôsz had learned to ride horses. Learned well enough to stay in the saddle at a gallop. Riding wasn't pleasant for him, nor were the pills, but it allowed him greater middle-distance speed than he had on foot.
Tsûlgâx rode ahead a hundred yards, and another rakutu behind. They were all the escort Kurqôsz had on this mad ride. The loss of his crystal had shaken him deeply, and he would not wait for a platoon to be called out and mounted.
It was Tsûlgâx who saw the tracks of cloven hooves turn south on the lesser road. He stopped, and when Kurqôsz got there, pointed them out. All three turned south then, following them.
Kurqôsz was queasy from the ride, and his senses somewhat dulled from the pills. If they didn't catch up soon, he thought, he'd get down and run awhile. They'd gone nearly half a mile before he realized something was wrong, and called a halt. Tsûlgâx rode back to him, his expression concerned.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"We should not have turned. He must have thrown the crystal away, or hidden it. Near the crossroad. We are getting farther away from it."
He turned his horse then, and started back north, riding hard. The crystal! he told himself. Follow the crystal! The thief, the tracks, are secondary.
* * *
Macurdy had ridden half a mile up the sleigh trail, when he came to a three-sided woodsmen's shelter. In front of it lay a snow-capped heap of firewood blocks, with a splitting maul standing upright beside it. He stopped, and getting from his horse, stepped into the shelter. Inside was a split-log bench. A heavy steel splitting wedge lay on it, and he picked it up. It could almost have been made in Indiana; it had the familiar deep grooves on its slanting faces.
He knew at once what to do. Stepping outside, he lay the wedge on the battered maple chopping block, then reached into his pocket. The crystal was almost too hot to handle! Alarmed, he laid it hurriedly on a groove of the wedge, then reaching, took the maul and hefted it. Eyeing the crystal, he swung hard, overhead and down.
The heavy steel head slammed the crystal—and a shocking pain stabbed through Macurdy's skull! At the same instant he heard a terrible cry perhaps a hundred yards away. Dropping the maul, he staggered to the horse and pulled himself into the saddle. Then he kicked the animal into a canter, and lying low on its back, fled westward through the trees, toward the clearing.
* * *
Kurqôsz lay shuddering and puking in the snow, with Tsûlgâx and the other rakutu kneeling beside him. The blow that had struck the crystal had hammered Kurqôsz much harder than it had Macurdy, whose bonding with it had been brief and superficial. After a couple of minutes, the crown prince raised an arm for help, and Tsûlgâx hoisted him to his feet.
"He tried to destroy it," Kurqôsz croaked, "but it's still here somewhere. Unbroken. Help me."
With Tsûlgâx supporting him, he hobbled on, the other rakutu bringing the horses. A minute later they saw Macurdy's tracks, and in another the shelter and woodpile. They went to it, Kurqôsz scanning around with his mind for the crystal. It took awhile to find it. Instead of smashing it, the force of the hammer stroke had sent it flying twenty yards, where it lay buried in snow.
When he had it in his mittened hand, Kurqôsz raised it to his forehead, closed his eyes and concentrated. In his mind he saw a rakutu—no, a human or half-ylf dressed as a rakutu. Saw the face from the crystal's point of view. A face he remembered from the hive mind scene, of raiders murdering the headquarters staff at Colroi. And from somewhere earlier. He watched the attempt to destroy the crystal, saw the hammer raised and swung. And that was all. As if the sentience in the crystal had blacked out.
He realized now what had happened to Chithqôsz and his circle—those who'd survived the flood. This same creature had somehow gotten Chithqôsz's old crystal, and destroyed it. Crystals of power formed to resonate with the circle leader, and his younger brother wasn't hard like himself.
Turning, he gripped Tsûlgâx's shoulder. "I have seen his face," he told him. "And I will remember. I will hear him scream curses at the parents who gave him life. He will beg me to kill him."
The second rakutu held out Kurqôsz's reins, but the crown prince declined. "I will run," he said.
Haltingly he started in Macurdy's tracks, while the rakutur mounted and followed. As he ran, he strengthened, his head clearing. He would, he told himself, have his revenge, but not tonight. First he would win the war, and he needed all his attention, all his strength, to control the forces he would use. His circle too would need to be clear-headed and strong.
So. Tomorrow night then. Tomorrow night he would win the war. The aurora would still be there for him; he sensed it with certainty. Slowing, he looked up. Through the leafless crowns of hardwood forest, he saw it flickering and pulsing. Victory and devas
tation would be the ultimate vengeance. He'd devastated the east with fire and steel. The energy storm he'd create tomorrow night would roll westward with far greater devastation. Where he willed, as far as he willed. Tomorrow night vast tongues of flame would lick the enemy army from the face of the earth, leaving not even bones!
Kurqôsz did not follow his enemy's tracks. He pressed forward toward the farm. That was where the creature was going, he had no doubt. Going to collect the ylvin lord's widow. A half minute more and he'd have taken her earlier; she'd have been over the balcony railing and gone.
* * *
At the manor, Kurqôsz posted guards inside every entrance, every ground-floor window. After working a spell, and showing them through the crystal what to watch for: a giant boar, and the face from the raid on Colroi. Kurqôsz was familiar with cloaking spells. Being warned, and knowing what to watch for, was half the task of seeing through them.
When Tsûlgâx was shown the face, he said a single word, a name: "Montag!"
Kurqôsz knew at once that Tsûlgâx was right. Kurt Montag, the German half-wit! But clearly no half-wit after all.
And Montag had been inside this house, inside his bedroom. Worse, inside his sanctum! Kurqôsz hadn't been aware of the drape hanging from the loft vent till he'd returned with the crystal. Things became clear then; Montag had bypassed the door guard by using the loft. Ingenious! Daring! What kind of man could even contemplate the act, let alone carry it off?
Before he put him to the torments, he decided, he'd sit down with him, question him. There were things to be learned from him, and at any rate the man would be interesting.
The realizations, along with his run in the forest, had fired Kurqôsz with a land of manic exhilaration, though without canceling his wits. Back in the manor, he order the woman called Varia locked up with the other ylvin women. She was dangerous. He would still beget sons on her—this evening had added to his respect—but he would not have her as a lover.
Having had two long runs in the snow, Kurqôsz expected that when he went to bed, he'd fall quickly asleep. He was mistaken. There were things on his mind, demanding attention. Back in Bavaria, Tsûlgâx had said that Montag was dangerous, and should be killed. Tsûlgâx, with no access to the hive mind, and no apparent psychic talent. Only his hard, highly trained body and unbendable loyalty. But his concern over Montag had seemed ridiculous. Perhaps, Kurqôsz thought, he has a talent that I do not: sensing future dangers. He warned me about the ylvin she-wolf as well.
Tsûlgâx. What kind of father had he been to him? By hindsight, better than he'd realized, it seemed to him. He'd been kind, and not overly demanding.
He looked back then at Kurt Montag in Bavaria. Had there been signs he should have seen? That should have warned him? None came to him. He focused on the man as first he'd seen him: earnest, stupid, and lame. He'd even felt a certain fondness for the creature. Montag, whose psychic talents were strong only by comparison with the other Germans at the Schloss.
Unexpectedly, his concentration on Montag's face clicked in another picture from the hive mind, one Kurqôsz hadn't seen before: Montag wearing a peculiar uniform—baggy, and with many pockets. In Hithmearc, speaking to a guard corporal at the gate shelter! Montag, intelligent and self-assured, standing straight, and for a human, tall. This was the man in the raid at Colroi! No wonder he hadn't recognized him at first.
The corporal's trace in the hive mind ended with his shaking hands with Montag, and at the same moment a shocking pain in the abdomen. And unconsciousness. Kurqôsz scanned ahead. On that same day, the gate lodge had burned to the ground, killing all but one of the guards and hostel staff. Days later the gate itself had collapsed, seemingly destroyed, stranding Greszak and his staff on Farside. Too much had happened, in too short a time, and the corporal's trace had not been investigated. The assumption had been, the man had died in the fire with the others.
Montag! The human was more than intriguing. He was sinister! And how had he come to Vismearc? Perhaps Tsûlgâx was mistaken. Perhaps this man simply resembled Montag. But no, for that had surely been Montag in the uniform of many pockets. For it not to be him would require nearly impossible coincidences—a Montag in Bavaria, a lookalike in Hithmearc, and another here. No, all three were one man. Kurt Montag.
The crown prince swung his long legs out of bed, wrapped himself in his robe, and had the officer of the guard called. And Tsûlgâx. When they reached his room, he gave them only one order: "Montag must be taken alive! At whatever cost! Alive and sound! I have questions to ask him, and he must be able to answer. If anyone kills or sorely wounds him, except on my order, that person will replace him in the torments."
* * *
Macurdy was captured in the hour before dawn, but when Kurqôsz learned of it, he decided his prisoner could wait. He'd awakened with his attention on the coming night, and the sorcery he would work. It must have priority, even above Montag.
It was Tsûlgâx who reported the capture, and asked to be allowed to kill the German. His master's refusal so upset the rakutu, Kurqôsz feared his son's protectiveness might overcome his obedience. So within the hour, Kurqôsz sent Tsûlgâx off to Camp Merrawin, carrying a written order. He was to take command of the rakutur there—a "promotion" that did not fool Tsûlgâx. Nor did Kurqôsz suppose it would. But it enforced his restriction without the odor of punishment.
He'd always been a loving parent.
As soon as he'd sent Tsûlgâx off, Kurqôsz rousted his circle from their beds and ordered them out to run. "It will clear your heads!" he told them. Then he shook Chithqôsz awake, and ordered him to roust out his circle, sick and feeble from the destruction of their old stone. Kurqôsz himself led them all on a long walk, west out of the clearing, accompanied by two companies of rakutur.
The sorcerers finished with an easy, two-mile lope, by which time even Chithqôsz's circle was beginning to look functional. I'll let them eat now, Kurqôsz told himself, then lead them in drills to renew their focus.
* * *
A few days earlier, he'd sent his third crystal circle to the forward lines at Deep River, to create an umbrella against the storm he planned. It was Chithqôsz's circle which would help "tap the aurora." (Actually tap the solar wind responsible for it.) Now he went over his plan with them.
It was midafternoon before he had the prisoner brought to him—hands manacled behind his back, for Kurqôsz recalled Montag's talent at casting small fireballs. His only other restraint was a rakutu standing behind him, ready to act.
But Montag had little to say, so Kurqôsz had him taken to the lesser of the two rooms flanking his office, where he was blindfolded, gagged, and bound to a chair. A heavy chair, bolted to the floor; he would answer questions later. The crown prince preferred to separate questioning and torture, but either way, he would have his information.
* * *
In his small prison, Macurdy was in the watchful care of a rakutu. At supper time the rakutu removed his prisoner's gag, and fed him—a cup of lentil soup, a small corn pancake, and water. Then he gagged him again. Macurdy was in blackness, for night had fallen, and the room's single candle and the snowlight through the window were too weak to filter through his blindfold.
He felt an impulse to meditate, something he'd seldom done since Varia had been stolen from him more than twenty years earlier. Being bound and gagged was not conducive to meditation, but he rationalized the impulse, telling himself it was something he could work at, to pass the time. It went surprisingly well. After a bit he reached a slow alpha stage, which was as far as he usually got. Thoughts, images, fragments of memories drifted through without taking root or lodging. Gradually even they ceased, and his sense of time shut off almost entirely, though awareness remained.
After an indeterminate period, a drum began to beat. In the next room. A small drum tapped with the fingertips in an intricate sound pattern; he could feel it more than hear it. Kurqôsz, he realized. It was unlike Arbel's drumming, which produced a reverie for
healing. This ... this sought to lure ... not him, but something.
And now he sensed the crystal; it caught and held his consciousness. The quality of blackness changed. It was no longer an absence of light, but blackness as a presence. He sensed the mind and will of Kurqôsz, the synergistic minds and wills of his circle. And he himself was with them, though not of them. An observer unobserved, for they were intent on their procedure.
The state was transitory. Abruptly he was outside the room, in a night without stars, moon, or aurora. There was no land, no trees ... but gradually there was light—a dirty magmic red that thickened, became a vast, pulsing, plasmic energy.
Energy with a primitive but powerful sense of its own existence, neither obedient nor resistive, but aware, responsive. Responsive to the minds that acting as one, ruled by one, enticed, molded, manipulated. The energy plasma changed, its embryonic awareness unfolding and growing. He felt Kurqôsz's intention flowing into it, infusing it with something like intelligence ... and purpose!
From deep within/outside Macurdy, his essence spoke. Powerful! Must not happen, must not continue to completion! Disrupt it! Disperse it! An energy swelled within him—a higher vibration, almost beyond bearing, more intense than the most powerful orgasm. His follicles clenched, erecting his hair; he writhed and thrashed on his chair. And with the energy came intention surpassing anything he'd imagined, pure intention straining for release. Now! he thought. Now! It burst from the pit of his stomach—and the universe exploded. Minds screamed, their agony searing him. His own screamed with them—but in blind exultation, not agony.