The grimness shattered, burst by spring-light that was all too familiar, all too inevitable. I never had time to bellow, No! Not here! Not now!
“Welllll,” it came in a drawl. He cocked his head, appraising her like a tavern wench. “Even then . . . I’d probably marry you.”
Her eyes spat. Her cheeks flamed. In a flash she was not merely aged but hideous.
“You ape! You oaf! You limping hobbledehoy! You—” Her eyes slashed past him. “You gaping ninnies, take him! Truss him up! Cripple him!”
He spun on the advancing guards, I felt some blind compulsion seize me and found I was advancing too, sword out lest he resisted, mind aware of what he was and that I was a friend to him, limb and muscle refusing to hear and will accepting it.
He whirled back to me. I saw his eyes flare, green-white, blinding, and knew he would use A’sparre, in a moment I should be dead as Gevos. I had no way of preventing it, and no fear. Whatever impelled me did not care.
His back arched, his breath drew in. Then, like a bough breaking, the intent snapped.
As my sword-point touched his ribs he said, “I won’t fight, Alkir.”
I could not feel relief, let alone thankfulness. Something was appeased, I knew that. I also knew where we were to go. Down into the city, to the Treasury, whose vaults had once been the imperial prison for rebels of common blood. There were still chains riveted into those clammily weeping walls, their key in the Vault-keeper’s custody. I would lock them on, and restore the key to its rightful guardian.
The guards about-turned and fell in on either side. Without protest he swung and started to walk.
Chapter IV
I had climbed back to Los Morryan, handed the key to the Lady, and re-crossed the square outside Ker Morrya’s gate, when I regained my will.
Waking up? No, for I had never slept. Escaping a glass cell? No, for glass you can smash for yourself. Growing up in a single breath? But a baby lacks a man’s coherent memory. I could remember everything. But now it all had meaning. And I was free to make a response.
The passersby must have thought me a lunatic, running full-pelt in the street. The Treasury scribes certainly did, for I barged straight back to the Vault-keeper’s room and on down the long flight of steps into those dim tunnels, past the torch we had left in a bracket, snatching it as I tore into the dank crypt where that other will had directed me, yelling, “What happened? For the love of anything you like, what happened up there?”
He stood as we had left him, back to the square rough wall blocks whose faces ran sopping red in the torch-glow, red as the pools on the uneven floor. I had done my duty well. A long fetter ran to each manacle, another to the leg-iron on each ankle. He could hardly have lain down, had there been inducement. But whatever we did, he had recovered his own guard. His eyes caught the light, narrow, sparkling green.
“To me?” he said. “Or to you?”
“To, to—” I found then what it means to grow incoherent with rage.
“You were given a Command. Not pure Chake, a blend of some sort. There’s something odd about all you Assharrans, it must come from—up there. You’re all permanently half under Letharthir—half mesmerized.”
“Mesmerized!”
“Bewitched, then.” His brows came down. “Did you never think, on the way here, to ask what you were doing? To say to yourself, Here’s a very strange fellow, peculiar powers, quite unknown quantity, could be highly dangerous—so I’ll just conduct him straight to my ruler’s doorstep and see what he’ll do?”
“I, I—”
I stopped as it hit me, winding as a door in the face. All that way, clean across Assharral. The Captain of the Lady’s Guard. With a wizard under my shield-arm, worrying about spies and the doings of the Sathellin.
“Then, when you do get a Command, you go clean under.” The eyes twinkled. “Like sleepwalkers, you were.”
“And you, you cackling idiot!” It is wonderful what liberties affection permits. “You let her get away with it!”
The laughter snuffed. “To stop her,” he said flatly, “I would have had to kill you all.”
I gasped. He nodded. “Or challenge her, and try to break the Command. There wasn’t time.”
Water plopped. I heard the scurry of a rat. Then my own voice, sounding shrunken, small.
“Could you have—done it?”
“You mean, was I able? Oh, yes. Was I willing? Never. No.”
I stared. He sounded quiet, stern, pure adamant.
“I will never,” he said, “save myself by killing innocent men.”
The torch guttered between us in the sodden air. He had had the power to win. He had chosen defeat, shameful bondage, rather than abuse that power. For the sake of his enemy’s tools. And whether she understood his power or not, whether or not she had gambled on his integrity, the Lady had been ready to see us slain. For malice, revenge. Victory.
I should have agreed. Every soldier knows his life may be the price of winning, and counts winning the end that justifies all means. And unquestioning obedience, unswerving fidelity, are the corners of a soldier’s earth. But mine was no longer firm.
“She,” I said, “just wanted to win.”
He nodded, silent. Even now, he would not stoop to calumny.
“However she did it. . . .” Slowly, a conviction formed and firmed to intent in my mind. “I’m going back to get that key.”
“Alkir!” His voice spun me round and his eyes were white-hot crystal. “You’ll do nothing of the sort!”
“But—but—you said yourself, it’s against Math! It must be stopped! You can’t sit here and refuse to—”
“I refuse,” he said between his teeth, “to get you killed.”
“Killed!”
“Wake up, man. Stop thinking you’re a big brave sword-swinging soldier and she’s just a slip of a girl. If she let you up there, you couldn’t do a thing. She could walk you straight over that parapet. And she would.
“Don’t drop the torch,” he went on after a moment, rather hastily, but I knew the smile had revived. “I’m not that fond of the dark.”
I groaned. He, I could hear, smiled. “When Fengthira taught me Lathare I spent two days tied on a rope-end. This is just damnably wet. And uncomfortable.”
“And,” I said bleakly, “there’s no way out.”
He was testing the manacles. “I don’t . . . think . . . Axynbrarve is up to these. If it were, I’d have to cut down a wall of sleepwalkers upstairs. And probably the whole guard outside.” He gave me a cryptic look. “Including you.
“And don’t get sacrificial,” he anticipated me. “I loathe sacrifice.”
“Then what in the name of your Math,” I bellowed, “is this?”
“Oh, this is tactics,” he answered cheerfully.
Looking round, I saw a fetter-ring, and stuck up the torch. “I don’t even know the ensigns, and I’m in the middle of a war. Do you think you could explain, at least? To begin with, what was that—thing?”
“Not a thing.” For the first time he showed reverence. “That was Los Velandryxe Thira. The Well”—reverence deepened—“of Wisdom’s Light.”
“But what is it?”
A fetter cramped the familiar scrub at his hair. “Nobody really knows. Fengthira tells a very old story that it’s a drop of water from Los Therystar—do you know the Ystanyrx, the Great Tales? No. Anyway, there’s one about the Xaira, the separation of aedryx and men. The Mothers of men and aedryx were sitting by Los Therystar, the Well of the Purple Flowers, when Arva Aedryx saw in its water the first vision in Yxphare. Foresight, you’d say. The Mother of Men laughed and Arva Aedryx struck her blind. So ever since, aedryx and men have been”—an old wound spoke in his voice—“different.”
He looked at my face, and shrugged. “Math knows where Los Therystar was, if it was at all. The Tales are truth, not history. And nobody knows the origin of Los Velandryxe, because at some stage some enterprising soul put a Ruanbraxe, a mind-shield, on it. Y
ou can’t see it with the Sights, not with Pharaone or Phathire, and Fengthira says Yxphare’s the same. One reason why that Sight’s so dangerous.”
“Sights?”
“Pharaone is farsight. How I checked the mare this morning. Phathire is vision of the past. Yxphare, future-sight, is a gift, it can’t be taught. Because of the mind-shield, I didn’t know what Moriana had. I thought she was just Ammath. Evil. An aedr gone rotten. For her line, it would be in character.”
“Never mind her line. What about this—this—heirloom?”
“Um. . . . The lower arts, like the Sights, and the Commands, even A’sparre, deal with minds. The higher ones are different. Wreve-lan’x, Axynbrarve, then the harder ones, Wreviane, Wrevurx, that’s weather-work—”
“You can control the weather?”
“Oh, yes.” He was quite matter-of-fact. “I could have turned that storm in Thangar. But Wrevurx is the first art where Velandryxe really matters. Wisdom. Justice, judgment, and Math.”
My head swam. “I thought Math was respect for that-which-is?”
“Part of it, yes. The rule part. Just as a storm’s part of that-which-is. Before you meddle with it, you have to judge if your reason’s pressing enough. To push a storm about may drown someone here, or ruin someone there, who needed rain for his crops. It may spoil remoter things.” His look was unfathomable. “So you must use judgment as well as power. And guide the judgment by Math.”
“Respect for that-which-is.” I clung to that talisman. “But where does this Well come in?”
“At the very top. The supreme art is Wreve-lethar. The old aedryx never told prentices about that at all. You had to be a master to know and a Velandyr so much as to think of trying it. And of the handful who tried, only one, so far as I know, managed to succeed.”
“But what did he actually do?”
He grew very quiet. “Wreve-lethar means, to control the dream. And what aedryx call the Dream is—what you call the Universe.”
My head spun right round. I grabbed for solid stone. When the Lady said, “You could change the entire world,” I had thought she meant something ordinary like conquering it.
“You need wisdom,” he was saying, “and more skill than I’ll ever have, and the sort of strength I only dream about. Most aedryx said it was for the Pharaon, the creators, and forgot it. A few tried, and lost their minds. But one succeeded. And he changed the Dream. He brought Math into the world.”
“Who . . . was he?”
“Th’Iahn.” He spoke the name with care, respect, but not reverence. “The first Heagian. Founder of the Flametree, from which both my and Moriana’s lines were a branch. . . .” His eyes came to sudden life. “But I’ll show you. Look here.”
His eyes seemed to swallow me into gulfs of black. Then a tiny world rushed toward me, I was in it. Part of it.
He was on his feet looking straight at me across a work-table cluttered with mementoes, gems, bird-skulls, artifacts. His coppery hair flung back from his temples as with the wind of flight, his eyes bore down on me like runaway green fires, leaping from that volcanic face. “You’ll want and wish as you like,” he hissed, “but I say you will!”
I literally tumbled backward from that impact. Beryx looked down on me sprawling amid the puddles with a somewhat wry grin.
“One of his happier moments. Makes you wonder how he could sire Math?”
I reformed my wits. “So he used Wreve-lethar and—and changed the world by dreaming Math?” He nodded, I scrambled up. “At least my outposts are set. But how does this Well come in?”
“Wreve-lethar’s like any other art. There has to be a focus. A mind, a woodheap, a horse. When you try to change the Dream, Los Velandryxe is where you look.”
The torch popped, water dripped. He stared back at me, not trying to soften the significance.
“Yes” he said. “In the wrong hands—with the wrong intent—it could be the most terrible thing on earth.”
“But—why didn’t you take it when she—”
“No!” It was violent. “In Math you do only as you must. The temptation to alter things, to—” The sweat sprang on his forehead. “If you did master the Well, it could rot you as easily as power. Easier. Especially if you follow Math. The hardest lesson I ever had to learn is not to act. To let alone, if not well alone. To have the Well. . . .” He shuddered. “No, I can’t—I won’t think of it!”
“So,” I was still catching up his line of march, “she offered it to you for evil. Ammath. Is that it?”
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing, Alkir.” It was almost pleading now. “Four knows how she came by it, it was lost in one of the upsets three generations before Berrian, and he was my ninth forefather. Fengthira thought it was lost forever. She told me about Wreve-lethar, but just in explaining Math. Moriana doesn’t know. She’s aedric blood, but she’s blind ignorant. She’s learnt to tinker with a few things,” again that adept’s scorn, “like slowing time to keep herself young, and mastering Assharral—she picked the rest from my thought. She’s a child. A child playing with a wound-down catapult.”
I caught my breath. “With the world sitting in its target eye!”
Then Assharral’s bondage, ten guard captains, my ignoble subjection, his defeat by his own integrity, all burst in my head at once. “A child! No child would—no child could—have you mislaid your wits?”
“Now don’t start feeling your wounded vanity all over again.” The grin revived. “Mine’s a lot more wounded than yours.”
After a moment I said, “What do you mean to do?”
His face wore the strangest look. Airy, willful, save for the lack of malice it might have been the Lady’s own intransigence.
“Oh, I intend to . . . wait.”
“Wait! You—she—I—what will your Fengthira say to that?”
He chuckled. A resonant, acerbic feminine voice snapped, “ ‘I told thee naught but trouble would come of tha gallivanting. Tha wast ever one to stick tha hand in a hornets’ nest and wonder that t’was stung.’ No,” he resumed in his normal voice, “distance means nothing to Lathare.” Ruefully, “And she’s probably right. I couldn’t resist teasing Moriana at the end, and look where it’s landed me.”
I ignored this last frivolity. “She won’t help? What sort of a friend—”
“Alkir, Alkir. She follows Math. Do only what you must. If she came raving in here firing thunderbolts, who knows what she might spoil?” The chuckle answered my thoughts. “No, this isn’t bad enough for a Must. Not yet. What can you do? Um. You were allowed down here once, so . . . I could do with something to eat. And something to sit on. And—most definitely—something to throw at the rats.”
* * * * *
Part of me must have outmarched my chaotic thoughts, for as I blinked onto the street a black flash at one eye-corner spun me round with a fistful of surcoat and my sword at an unprotected throat.
“Eh, ow, Cap’n, whoa!” Sivar’s heavy face was twisting ludicrously above my grasp. “I ain’t done nothing, sir!”
“Oh.” I let go. It was all triggered and light, as in a battle’s heart. “Yes. I—what are you doing here?”
He squirmed. Then he addressed the pavement. “Sir . . . is it true? Our wizard—he's been chained up in there?”
Our wizard. I hardly noted it. Nor did I marvel anew at the wonders of barrack espionage. I was merely thankful for them.
“Walk away. Normally.” We paced downhill. “It’s true. The Lady—” I stopped. Our wizard. But how far did that go?
“He’s detained.” An eye-corner on his face told me all I needed. “You’re off duty? Buy some food, and something rat-proof to put it in. No, it’s not the lap of luxury down there. A stool. Candles. Water-bottle. If you can find it, some,” I all but said Everran, “Sathel wine. Keep things small. We’ll have to lug it past the whole Treasury. Meet at my house. You know it?”
He nodded, eyes glistening. Intrigue, illicit intrigue, and with an officer. He would glory in
it till his dying day.
Callissa was posted in earshot of our door. At my footstep she flew out, face transparently thankful at seeing me alone. “Thank the Lady, he’s gone! It’s all over. Now we can—” She stopped.
Taking her elbow, I made for our living room. Unsurprised, I noted it was already evening. Soon the twins would be in from play.
“Do we have a couple of spare blankets? And where’s my campaign cloak?”
She did not move. “I thought it was finished,” she said.
“He’s in the Treasury vault. In chains. Can I just walk away?”
Her face was flint. I had never seen such a wall in it. “You should.”
I opened my mouth. She cried, “You’re Captain of the Guard, Alkir!”
“So?”
“So leave it alone! Let the Lady see to—”
“Callissa . . . listen! She told us to arrest him. He could have killed us all.” She went white. “He told me he would never save himself by killing innocent men. Can I walk away from that?”
“You should! You must! If she chained him he’s bad! I knew it, I knew he was, mad and bad and—”
“Callissa, she ordered us to arrest him! She wouldn’t have cared if we had been killed!”
“You’d be doing your duty, wouldn’t you? You always said that was what mattered. That it was all a soldier would ask!”
“Yes. But. . . . Obey orders, yes. But how if they’re not right?”
“Not right! They were the Lady’s, weren’t they?”
“Yes, but—suppose they were still wrong?”
“How could they be wrong? What are you talking about?”
“If they were . . . not good?” Ammath, he had said. How could I explain, with only the vaguest newborn notion of what its own disciple admitted to imperfectly understanding, this intangible, unintelligible Math?
Her face was brittle with scorn and strain and hostility. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Callissa. . . .” Never had I so desired the gift of words. “He’s an aedr. A wizard. He has powers. Magic, if you like. But he won’t use it, unless he thinks it’s right. He—”
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