by David Weber
But other Dark churches had different preferences. Carnadosa, for example. The lady of black sorcery did not delight in cruelty for cruelty's sake the way Sharn and some of the others did. But in many ways, her total amorality, her total indifference to cruelty or atrocity so long as its outcome served her needs, was almost worse. And all of her senior priests were also wizards, and children were prized when it came to the rites of blood magic.
"Aye, so I've heard," Bahzell said. "Still and all, for all folk keep telling me such as that, it's in my mind that you and I have been seeing them working hand in hand more often than not."
The irony in Walsharno's mental tone was only a frail mask for the icy fury burning at the courser's heart. Had he not bonded with Bahzell and become a champion of Tomank himself, Walsharno would almost certainly have eventually become a herd stallion, and the coursers didn't really think the way the Races of Man did. Each courser was an individual, true, but they saw themselves also collectively, as members of the herd. And, as members of the herd, each was responsible for the protection of all. Especially the herd stallions, who led and governed their herds . . . and who died to defend them.
Bahzell understood that, better even than another wind rider might have, for unlike most wind riders, he shared the coursers' herd sense. Even if he hadn't, any champion of Tomank would have shared the cold, bleak hatred burning like ice in Walsharno's heart.
"Well," the hradani said quietly, "I've no notion as to how lucky or unlucky you and I may be after being, Walsharno. But I'm thinking as how the scum as did this—" his mobile ears flattened as he swept one hand in an arc indicating the devastated village "—are after deserving a wee bit of ill luck all their very own."
"Then let's you and I be bringing it to them," Bahzell said. "But first . . ."
The hradani held out his right hand.
"Come," he said softly, and five feet of gleaming steel materialized in his fist as he summoned the sword which normally rode sheathed across his back.
He gripped it just below the quillons, holding it up hilt-first as the symbol of the god he served, and felt Walsharno joining with him, heart, mind, and soul.
"I'm thinking as how these folk fell in the service of Light," he said, speaking to the night and to their deity for both of them. "Any man or woman who dies defending children is one as I'm proud to call brother or sister. And I'll not leave my brothers or sisters to wolves and carrion-eaters."
"Aye, it's certain I am—we are," Bahzell replied, knowing he spoke for Walsharno, and not at all surprised to hear Tomank's voice.
"I've no doubt of that," Bahzell said. "And it's happy I'll be to meet them someday. But until that day comes, Walsharno and I will be doing what we must, and we'll not leave them."
"Aye," Bahzell said simply.
Bahzell heard the faint undertone of amusement in Tomank's voice, despite the grim horror of the scene about them.
"As to that, if I thought it was like to do me a single solitary bit of good, aye, I'd be asking. As it's not—"
He shrugged, and felt a huge, immaterial hand rest lightly on his shoulder for a moment.
"In which case, I'm thinking we'd best be getting on with it, if it's all the same to you, and all," Bahzell said, and this time Tomank actually chuckled.
Bahzell didn't respond in words. Instead, he simply held his sword higher and felt Walsharno's will joining with his. He and the courser fused into a single whole, greater than either of them could ever be alone, and that fusion reached out to the blue-burning glory of their deity's presence.
Tomank reached back to them. The bonds which joined the three of them, normally almost imperceptible, yet always present, blazed with sudden, resurgent strength as Bahzell and Walsharno opened the channel between Tomank and the world of mortals wide. A pinnacle of brilliant blue light shot upwards, an azure needle stabbing into the starry heavens from the hradani's raised sword. Then a ring of blue fire exploded outward, sweeping through the gutted village, bathing that scene of horror in Tomank's cleansing light. The ring flashed across the mangled bodies, the blood, the grim residue of agony, despair, and courage, and when it passed, there were no more bodies, no more blood. There was only the night, the still-smoking ruins of an empty village, and a profound and abiding sense of peace.
Bahzell lowered his sword slowly, filled with a deep surge of satisfaction and content, and felt Tomank's hand upon his shoulder once again. Not in comfort, but in the approving clasp of a war leader for his most trusted sword companions. And as he and Walsharno shared that feeling, they also felt Tomank behind them, staring out into the night where any with eyes to see must recognize the explosion of power which had cleansed the village.
VII
"phrobus! What was that?"
Garsalt's voice was high-pitched, almost shrill, his exclamation so sudden that Trayn was startled into jerking his head up in surprise.
He was lashed across the horse once more, jouncing painfully along as his captors headed back out across the rolling grasslands. They were following the course of the stream at which they'd stopped earlier, and he'd found it hard to remain motionless and limp once or twice when the horse under him pushed its way through the lashing branches of low-growing scrub. Despite that, he'd remembered to continue to feign unconsciousness with what certainly appeared to have been success.
Until now.
"What do you think it was, Garsalt?" Tremala's musical soprano demanded scornfully. "Let's see now. We know Wencit is somewhere behind us; that was in front of us, and you know how fond the Bloody Hand's always been of showing off. Hmmm . . . doesn't that suggest at least one possibility to your teeny-tiny mind?"
"Yes, but—"
"Oh, grow a backbone, Garsalt! You did listen when the plan was explained to you, didn't you? Perhaps you should have taken notes, too. Lots of them, using short, easily spelled words."
"Of course I listened," Garsalt shot back in an angry semi-whine. "But we weren't supposed to meet him out here all by ourselves!"
"And we won't," Rethak put in. The shorter, dapper wizard sounded almost amused, Trayn thought. And then—without warning—a hard, ringing slap exploded across the back of the journeyman mage's head, sending fresh cascades of stars sparkling painfully across his vision.
"Awake, I see, Master Aldarfro," Rethak said nastily.
"Oh, he'
s been awake for hours." Tremala sounded amused, Trayn noticed, blinking involuntary tears of pain. "I thought about mentioning it, but I decided a courteous host would let him get his rest. After all," her voice turned crueler, "he's going to need it, isn't he?"
All three wizards laughed. It was a taunting, vicious sound, but Trayn heard more than amusement and anticipation in it. He heard the sound of small boys, whistling in the dark as they made their way through midnight woods.
There was no point pretending any longer, and he raised his head a bit higher, looking back at them. It was impossible to make out their expressions clearly in the darkness, but Trayn was a mage. Only a journeyman, perhaps, but still a mage. He didn't need to see their expressions to know his original impression of their nervousness was accurate.
"If you knew he was awake, why didn't you say something?" Garsalt demanded.
"Perhaps because I wanted to see if he really did have any 'deadly powers of the mind.' " Tremala's sugary-sweet tone turned the last five words into a sneer. "After all, I knew he was awake, so he was hardly going to surprise me with any sudden attacks. If he was going to kill anyone, well, I suppose it would have been one of you two, wouldn't it?" Both her male companions turned to glower at her, and she laughed. "At least it would have let me kill two birds with one stone, as it were. It would have confirmed just how 'deadly' these magi are . . . and relieved me of putting up with at least one of you into the bargain."
Neither of the others seemed to share her amusement, Trayn noticed, and managed not to flinch when Rethak's open palm smashed across the back of his head once again.
"Stop that, Rethak," Tremala said mildly. "You have better things to do than take out your anxieties on Master Aldarfro."
"I don't like magi," Rethak grated.
"And you're scared enough of Bahzell to need a new set of breeches, too, now that you know he and that outsized nag of his are in the vicinity," Tremala half-sneered. "You really ought to do something more useful with all that energy, you know. Besides, we need Master Aldarfro . . . undamaged. For now."
Trayn could have done without those last two words, but at least Rethak stopped hitting him in the head. Which, he decided, wasn't actually all that much of an improvement when he found himself looking into Tremala's dark eyes, instead. The sorceress smiled thinly at him, with the amused malice a cat reserved for the mouse under its claws.
"I wouldn't get too comfortable, little mage," she told him softly. "You may be too valuable to play games with at the moment, but, then, we weren't sent to collect you for our amusement, either. Certain . . . parties have gotten a bit curious about these mind powers you magi seem to possess. And that rather irritating Council of Semkirk of yours is becoming a bit annoying. We don't really mind all that much as long as you only make problems for your . . . ah, homegrown practitioners, shall we say? But you're beginning to inconvenience us as well, so our superiors want a mage all their very own to play with. To study." Her smile could have been used as a scalpel. "To . . . dissect."
Trayn was astounded when he found himself continuing to meet her gaze without flinching.
"They must find us quite a bit more than 'annoying' if you've come all this way just to trap a journeyman mage who hasn't even completed his studies yet," he heard his own voice say. "I imagine your 'superiors' would have preferred someone a bit more experienced in the use of his powers. Or perhaps not." He actually managed to bare his teeth at her. "Perhaps they thought it would be . . . safer all round to settle for a journeyman?"
"Rethak," Tremala said. Trayn had prepared himself for the fresh blow, but the sorceress' voice stopped the wizard in mid-swing. She tilted her head to one side, regarding Trayn thoughtfully, then shrugged.
"You've a bit more spunk than I anticipated, Master Aldarfro," she acknowledged. "And for all I know, there may actually be something to your theory. On the other hand, it's not often we're given the name of a specific individual they want to see. And I'm very much afraid," she shook her head in mock sympathy, "that it often ends . . . badly for the individuals in question when we are."
"I'm flattered." He hoped she couldn't tell how hard it was to keep his voice level when someone had just replaced the marrow of his bones with ice. "But isn't this the point in all the really bad stories where the gloating villains tell their hapless victim all about their grand, complicated plans?"
"I believe it is," she agreed. "I, on the other hand, have better things to do with my time. We're about to have a few other guests we need to keep properly entertained, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you to your own devices. Do try to keep yourself amused."
She smiled brightly at him, pressed with a heel, and went cantering off into the darkness.
"Don't worry." Rethak's tone was ugly as Trayn let his neck muscles relax and pressed his face back into the side of the horse over which he was bound. "You'll find plenty to keep you 'entertained' where you're going, mage. I'll look forward to helping amuse you."
VIII
"Things are getting complicated," Wencit murmured.
Ken Houghton heard the wizard over his earphones and glanced at him. Wencit was gazing off into the darkness in the direction of the brilliant blue lightning flash which had split the night. Gauging distances in the dark was always difficult, but the flash had to have been considerably farther off than it had looked. Houghton hadn't heard even the faintest rumble, and any lightning bolt that brilliant must have been accompanied by the mother of all thunderclaps.
He waited for Wencit to say something more, but the wizard only frowned thoughtfully as long, slow seconds trickled past.
"I beg your pardon?" Houghton said finally, and wanted to laugh at his own astonishingly banal turn of phrase.
"Um?" Wencit turned towards him, wildfire eyes thinning down into bright slits.
"You said things are getting complicated." Houghton chuckled with harsh irony. "Given the way Jack and I got here in the first place, and all of the certifiably insane things you've had to say since we did, 'getting complicated' isn't exactly a phrase I'm delighted to be hearing."
"I can see how you might feel that way," Wencit conceded with a chuckle of his own. "And I really didn't mean to sound mysterious. It's just that I've been continuing that wrestling match I mentioned to you earlier, and I think their glamour's sprung a slight leak. Unless, of course, they wanted to let me have a peek inside."
"And why might they have wanted anything like that?"
"I couldn't really say . . . yet." Wencit shrugged. "It's rather like a game of chess, I suppose. Or perhaps the sort of misdirection in which a stage conjurer specializes. You show the other fellow what you hope he'll see in order to keep him from noticing the knuckleduster coming at him from an entirely different direction." He snorted. "As a matter of fact, I've done it myself, on occasion."
"Somehow I fail to find that particularly reassuring," Houghton said dryly while Tough Mama continued to snort along. The JP-8 in the LAV's fuel tanks had fallen to about the halfway point, and Houghton hoped they weren't going to end up running them dry before they got wherever the hell they were supposed to be going.
"Did that 'peek' of yours tell you how much farther we've got to go?" he asked.
"No," Wencit said. "But that—" he waved one-handed in the direction of the silent lightning bolt "—tells me quite a bit."
"How?"
"That flash was Bahzell," Wencit said simply.
"So he's a lightning rod, is he?"
"As a matter of fact," Wencit actually laughed out loud, "that's a remarkably good description of Bahzell Bahnakson, in a great many ways. But the lightning didn't strike him, Gunnery Sergeant. It came from him. Well, from him and Walsharno."
"Sure it did." Houghton decided he should have sounded rather more skeptical than he actually did.
"They can be a bit flamboyant," Wencit said. "Mind you, Bahzell is a Horse Stealer, too. He knows the value of creeping about in the bushes, and he's quite good at it, when he puts his m
ind to it. But he must have decided the 'bad guys,' as you call them, already know he's in the vicinity. You might say that was his way of warning them that he knows they are, as well."
"And he thinks sending up flares to tell the other side he's coming is a good idea because—?"
"I could say it's because he's a champion of Tomank. Or because he's a hradani. Both of those statements are true, and either one would be more than enough to explain it. But I imagine the simple truth is that he and Walsharno are angry, Gunnery Sergeant. And, believe me, you really don't want to be the person who makes those two angry."