The Wizard's Promise

by Cliff McNish

  While Rachel pondered this, Eric murmured to her, ‘Yemi’s here. Still a long way off and deep underground. Fola’s with him, too.’ He grinned. ‘She’s alive. They both are!’

  Gultrathaca gazed at Eric, shocked. ‘You can detect Fola’s minute scent from this distance? What else can you detect?’

  ‘Nothing,’ growled Eric. He peered down at the prapsies. They peered back, fearful for him. So quiet, Eric thought. They hadn’t said a thing since they arrived on Ool. He stroked their heads, feeling them shiver.

  ‘Eric,’ one said nervously. ‘Look out for the snow.’

  ‘I know,’ Eric said. ‘It’s everywhere. Just keep your heads down, boys. I’ll watch out for you.’

  ‘No, Eric. The snow’s wrong. It’s going the wrong way.’

  Great plumes of snow had burst from the Detaclyver’s peaks. They rose, then changed direction, sweeping towards Gultrathaca. This was no ordinary snow, Rachel saw. The flakes were not blown by the wind. They were fighting the wind to get to her.

  The snow was alive.

  ‘What are they?’ Rachel cried.

  ‘Essa,’ Gultrathaca said. ‘Servants of the Detaclyver. Protect yourselves.’

  Rachel held Eric close and raised her defensive spells.

  Gultrathaca moved upward into fiercer winds. The Essa followed, millions of tons of tiny life wheeling in a great arc to cut her off.

  ‘What – what should I do?’ Eric asked. ‘Use my anti-magic on them?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Rachel whispered.

  ‘But they’re coming!’

  ‘Wait, Eric!’

  A small number of the Essa reached her. They hovered, quivering with interest. Who was she? Rachel felt them in her mind, all hope and expectation, their thoughts chasing into her.

  They meant her no harm. Rachel knew that at once. Their target was Gultrathaca.

  Gultrathaca raced through the thickest clouds, trying to throw the Essa off. But they caught her. Landing on her jaws, they overpowered the soldier spiders, and crept inside her throat. For a while Gultrathaca was slowed down; then she coughed the Essa from her body. She flew on, crossing the boundary of the Detaclyver.

  A few Essa remained with Rachel. They were as light and insubstantial as the snow itself. Briefly their warm bodies clung to her face, curious and full of questions. Then they had no choice; they departed, returning to their homes in the summits of the Detaclyver. Rachel held out her hands, not wishing them to go.

  ‘I see the Essa have taken a liking to you,’ Gultrathaca said, amused. She guided Eric and Rachel northwards, leaving the Detaclyver behind. They reached the storm-whirls. When Gultrathaca ordered one to move aside, it did so at once.

  Behind the storm-whirls was an area of smooth ice. ‘The Prag Sea,’ Gultrathaca informed them. ‘Good hunting grounds for the brave.’ Rachel sent her information spells under the frozen waters. There was life here, fish in their millions. Each was armoured, their blood kept at boiling temperatures to burn a path through the solid ice.

  Finally they traversed the Prag Sea and entered a vast region of featureless snow plains. At their margin mountains rose starkly, and Rachel saw a line of smashed eye-towers that had once marked the edge of a city.

  Eric bent towards Rachel. ‘There are High Witches under us. Not many.’

  ‘The others are dead,’ Gultrathaca told him. ‘We keep a few to entertain the infants.’ As they soared over the remains of the towers, Rachel tried to take in the scale of the devastation. ‘Thûn,’ Gultrathaca declared. ‘The ruined city. During Heebra’s reign the greatest Highs lived here, though Gaffilex and Tamretis are larger. We tore those cities down as well.’

  There were no eye-towers left standing, but as they dropped lower Eric saw that the Gridda infants occupied the ruins. Some lurked amidst the debris of stones. Others dived in and out of underground entrances, yelling with fear or excitement – Eric couldn’t tell which. Many flew – with greater or lesser ability – about the sky.

  At the heart of Thûn a single storm-whirl turned. It was smaller than the others Rachel had seen. ‘A juvenile whirl,’ Gultrathaca told her. ‘It makes a playground for our infants.’ She indicated the base, where the winds were light and infants vaulted and tumbled. ‘A place they can learn how to fly without fear,’ Gultrathaca said.

  Higher up in the whirl Rachel spotted older Griddas. They fought in small groups, supervised by trainers. Occasionally one would fall, to be caught by the infants below, gathering around and howling their scorn.

  ‘The true battles take place at the top, where the winds are hardest,’ Gultrathaca said. Rachel saw one of the Griddas in the upper whirl fall. As she hit the ground her spiders were scattered across the snow. Before she could gather them up, the infants trampled them.

  Rachel tried to keep her voice steady. ‘Why did they do that?’

  ‘Why not? Poor quality magic must be punished.’ Gultrathaca gazed at Rachel, genuinely puzzled by her reaction.

  Such casual cruelty means nothing here, Rachel realized. She thought of Yemi and Fola, wondering what the Griddas might have done to them.

  From the edge of the juvenile whirl a group of young Griddas emerged. One flew over to Gultrathaca and said something.

  Gultrathaca laughed – Rachel could half-recognize such expressions now.

  ‘These ones are in awe of you, defeater of Heebra,’ Gultrathaca told Rachel. ‘They have waited a long time for this privilege.’

  The eyes of the youngsters lingered over every detail of Rachel’s body. Then they bowed to her. There was no doubting the sincerity of the gesture. After a last look, each of the youngsters flew eastwards, calling noisily to others.

  ‘Please take us to see Yemi now,’ Rachel said.

  ‘One thing first.’ Gultrathaca halted in the sky. Several adult Griddas, considerably larger than the infants, approached Rachel and Eric. They arrived in an elegant line, unhurried. Rachel noticed that Gultrathaca acknowledged each of them individually – these Griddas were obviously important. The adults stared in an uninhibited way at Rachel. Then each in turn, starting with Gultrathaca, lowered their head. They exposed the entire length of their necks.

  What did it mean? This is a warrior race, Rachel’s information spells told her. They are exposing their most vulnerable areas as a way of honouring you.

  The Gridda pack-leaders left their necks laid bare a long while. Finally they raised their heads and Gultrathaca said, sincerely, ‘We hope you enjoyed the affections of the infants. That was why we asked them to greet you. The Griddas alongside me are the highest ranking leaders of the packs of Ool. They have gathered to acclaim you both. We esteem you, Rachel, and you, Eric. The death of Heebra means more to us than you can know.’ All the pack-leaders bowed. The members of their packs close enough to witness also bowed, enormous swells of movement crossing the city.

  Rachel could not believe this. A genuine tribute. Not killed in space, she thought. Not killed on arrival. Her spells jumped into her eyes, filled with hope.

  ‘And now it is the turn of the youngsters to honour you in their own fashion,’ said Gultrathaca. She led the way towards the easternmost perimeter of Thûn. Ool’s pack-leaders fell in deferentially behind. As they flew remnants of the eye-towers flashed past, fewer and fewer until they left the city altogether. Infant Griddas followed. Most flew. Those not yet able to fly bounded or trampled over each other in the same direction.

  Beyond the city the snows flattened out. Gultrathaca slowed down and all the Griddas became utterly silent, even the infants.

  Rachel saw it before she understood: a great oval structure on the surface. It was hundreds of feet high and wide. The group of youngsters who had earlier studied Rachel were fussing over it, finishing just as she arrived.

  ‘Oh, my –’ Rachel started.

  It was her face: a snow sculpture.

  There was a thoughtful expression on the sculpture – a measured look, the same one Rachel had given the youngsters, captured
perfectly. A strand of hair fell over one eye. Her nostrils were caves large enough to hibernate inside. Scuffed snow formed the eyebrows. A spider, tiny, sat in one of them.

  Rachel lifted her hand to her real face. The spider was there, motionless. She flicked it off.

  For a moment there was quiet as all the Griddas humbly waited to see whether Rachel approved of their efforts. Then Rachel heard the voices. She had heard nothing like it. Gultrathaca had arranged for all the Griddas of the city to be here. They filled the sky and ground, as numerous as the falling snow.

  While Rachel and Eric stared, all the Griddas opened their jaws and roared their homage.

  14

  Parting

  The homage of the Griddas was so deafening that Rachel and Eric had to cover their ears until it subsided. Each time that happened, Gultrathaca renewed it. Finally the pack-leaders raised their claws and there was silence.

  Gultrathaca turned her attention back to Rachel. ‘Now we will honour you in another way,’ she said. ‘Every Gridda wishes to be the first to fight you. Choose a suitable contestant.’

  ‘Fight … me?’

  ‘Of course. What did you expect?’

  ‘I don’t understand. We don’t need to fight. We came here for … for peace.’

  Gultrathaca regarded her contemptuously. ‘Did you really believe I wanted peace?’

  ‘But I don’t … want to fight,’ Rachel said.

  A look of disgust passed across the faces of the pack-leaders. Gultrathaca, with difficulty, calmed them. ‘Don’t dishonour yourself, Rachel,’ she said menacingly.

  ‘I won’t fight!’

  ‘You have no choice. There is no going back now.’

  Rachel glanced in dismay at Eric, preparing to shift evasively.

  Gultrathaca’s eyes shone. ‘Yes, why not try? By now, however, you must realize that you can never shift fast enough to escape from me if you’re carrying Eric. Discard him. Give yourself a chance …’

  ‘We should have killed you on Earth!’ Eric thundered.

  ‘That was a mistake,’ Gultrathaca agreed. ‘I realized you were weak, then. But how to convince my Griddas? They know you faced down Heebra, Rachel. You make them anxious. I must cut you down to size. When they see how readily you can be dispatched, the invasion of your world will be more easily accomplished.’

  ‘Please,’ Rachel began, then stopped. She knew, seeing Gultrathaca’s expression, that no argument would change her mind. ‘What about Eric?’ she said. ‘If I co-operate, agree to fight, will you –’

  ‘Spare him? No. I plan to give him to the infants as entertainment.’

  ‘You mustn’t … I –’

  ‘Don’t plead,’ Gultrathaca said. She gestured for Eric to be removed. Eric freed his hands, prepared to use his spell-killing. The prapsies sprang onto his shoulders.

  ‘Wait,’ Rachel said to Gultrathaca. ‘Leave Eric. I’ll … I’ll do it. I’ll entertain the infants for you instead of him.’

  ‘Very well,’ Gultrathaca said indifferently. ‘I promised the youngsters something, after all. In that case, the first contest for you will start tomorrow.’ While Rachel tried to take in what this might mean, Gultrathaca added, ‘Make your parting. This is the last time you will see Eric.’

  ‘No!’ Rachel reached out for him, but her arm was knocked away.

  ‘Quick! Should I use my anti-spells?’ Eric asked. ‘Should I use them now?’

  Rachel agonized. ‘Yes. No – not yet, Eric.’

  Gultrathaca separated them. Before Rachel had time to say anything else two young Griddas flew across the sky. Knocking the prapsies off, they clasped Eric’s shoulders in their foot-claws and headed out over the city. The prapsies followed, shrieking insults at them.

  ‘Please –’ Rachel begged, as she was dragged away. ‘Let me –’

  ‘You are a warrior,’ Gultrathaca said. ‘There is no need for goodbyes.’

  ‘No. I –’ Rachel craned her head, trying to see what was happening to Eric.

  ‘Pathetic!’ Gultrathaca hissed. ‘Hold your head erect!’

  ‘Let me talk to Eric!’

  ‘No.’

  Eric was carried southwards across the darkening skies, already too far for his voice or that of the prapsies to reach her.

  As Gultrathaca picked her up, Rachel tried to shift. It did not work.

  ‘At least you’ve tried something!’ Gultrathaca sneered.

  Rachel felt all her spells quail inside her. She trembled. ‘What have you done to me?’

  ‘I’ve used a skin-contact spell,’ Gultrathaca said. ‘It reduces your abilities. I must give the infants a chance against you tonight, after all. You cannot shift. You cannot fly. Oh, and you will not be able to shape-change either. None of your other spells are affected.’

  ‘You’ve left me nothing!’

  ‘Nothing? Hardly nothing. Your death spells are still intact. You will need your deaths tonight.’

  Rachel shuddered. The deaths had always been part of her magic – the part she hid from, ignored, detested – yet they were there. Grasping her arm, Gultrathaca flew to a western part of Thûn Rachel had not seen. Here Heebra’s eye-tower still stood, piercing the sky. ‘A fitting place for you to stay,’ Gultrathaca said. ‘If you were a High Witch there could have been no greater glory – to rest in Heebra’s tower, above all others! You see, I honour you still.’

  ‘I don’t care about your code of honour!’

  ‘Do you care what happens to the children of your world?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘In that case kill yourself now. A Gridda would, the least of them. The longer you are alive, the more we’ll learn from you. We’ll see your spells, recognize how to counter them. We’ll know what to expect when we face the children of Earth. Is that what you want?’

  Rachel had no reply. ‘What will you do to Eric?’ she asked shakily.

  ‘Whatever I like.’ Gultrathaca flew Rachel through the cracked eye-window, depositing her on the chamber floor. ‘Actually, there may be a use for Eric. I’d heard from the High Witches how he could destroy spells, but perhaps they missed something more important.’ Gultrathaca left. Outside, in the gathering dark, Rachel saw the silhouettes of infants.

  They scrambled over the snow, heading for the tower.

  15

  The Long Night

  of Ool

  Rachel stood next to the shattered eye-window, watching the infants.

  While daylight lasted they remained at the base of Heebra’s tower, content to observe her with half-shut eyes. The arrival of night changed everything. There was no dusk, no gentle sunset. One moment there was enough meagre light by which to see; the next there was nothing. Instinctively, Rachel strained to find the last of the sun. Like someone who would perish without light, who was starved and whose only food was light, she sought the disappearing patch low in the east. Ool’s sun made a final stand against the dark. Then it was extinguished – and a vast shadow came hurtling across the world.

  And then there was no light at all.

  There was only the unbelievable cold and the sound of breathing – Rachel’s own ragged breaths mixed with new ones, the noise of infants labouring up the walls of the tower.

  Rachel blinked over and over, assuming her eyes would adjust. But they did not adjust. Her pupils enlarged to feed on what light they could find, but there was nothing to find. Ool had no moon. Stars had never winked through the clouds. Rachel was so frightened that she would have welcomed even the emerald-green light that once shone from Heebra’s tower – but the Griddas had forever removed that colour from the world.

  Her magic came to her aid at once. First it created a candle-brightness. Seeing the Griddas outside the window cower, Rachel intensified the light, driving them back. If she could not fly, if she could not leave the eye-tower, where was the safest place to be? She chose the middle of the floor – close enough to see what might come in through the window, and close enough to react to what might enter f
rom the doorway. In the darkness her night eyes opened, a brilliant silver.

  The night of Ool had never known such gleams.

  Despite this, the braver infants edged forward. Soon they became used to the glare of Rachel’s eyes, and after that they did not give her any peace at all. Stimulated by her strange looks, and the stories they had heard, and daring each other, they gathered wherever there was a space: in the eye-chamber, in the stairway leading up to it, in the snows outside. They clung to the steeps of the eye-tower walls; they peered in from the darkness.

  The first infants were too frightened to enter the eye-chamber. But they soon forgot their fears when Rachel made the mistake of not punishing those who came nearest. They wanted a closer look at her. She was so deformed. Why hadn’t she been killed at birth?

  Rachel didn’t dare take her eyes off them for a second. She was hungry, thirsty, cold, needing to think, needing to rest, to sleep, most of all to sleep – but there was no opportunity for that. All through the night her spells built dams and shields and small illusions to confuse the infants. She had never needed to call on her magic so continuously before.

  But the Griddas had their eye-shields, and there was plenty of time. They started finding ways around Rachel’s barriers. Unable to fly away or shape-change, Rachel had to constantly rebuild and repair her defences. And, she knew, this was just a few curious infants. Her first real trial hadn’t even started …

  As the hours passed Rachel believed that dawn would never come. The dark deepened; the infants seemed tireless. Then, in the middle of the night, one of them punctured her shield. When that happened Rachel did something she had promised herself she would never do: she summoned her death spells. For the first time in her life Rachel invited the deaths forward, and momentarily her eyes turned black with their power.