Bek moved cautiously, ignoring his lack of sight. He stepped lightly as he progressed, not putting his full weight down until he knew he wasn’t stepping into a pit, or triggering some sort of trap. He knew he could take a lot of damage—he’d been wounded several times in his short life—but he had no more appetite for injury than the next man. Besides, if what Nakor said was true, there should be some fun ahead.
Thinking of the little man caused Bek to pause a moment. Bek didn’t like him; but then again Bek didn’t like anyone; he didn’t dislike anyone, either. His feelings toward other people were fairly predictable: they were either allies or opponents—or they were inconsequential, like a horse or some other animal, sometimes useful, but mostly not worth the attention. But the little man stirred some strange feelings in Bek, feelings he couldn’t put a name to. He didn’t know if it was familiarity, or enjoyment or what. His pleasures tended to the intense: watching men bleed and scream, or rough coupling with women. He knew he liked fighting. The crashing of steel, the clamor of voices, blood and…death. He liked watching things die, he had decided some time before. It fascinated him to see that one moment an animal or a man might be alive, aware, moving, and the next it was lying there, just so much meat. Not even useful meat if it was a man.
Bek expected to kill some very dangerous men, and looked forward to it.
A faint sound from ahead caused him to forget Nakor and his confusion over things the odd gambler said all the time. Someone was moving at the far end of a tunnel and Bek’s entire body quivered with anticipation.
He was supposed to go back, but he had lost track of time—how long was ten minutes, anyway? The other soldiers would come in after him, and besides, Bek was anxious to be about some slaughter. It had been a very long time since he’d enjoyed a good fight. Nakor had done something to him, and often his head hurt when he tried to think about things. But Nakor had said it was all right for him to kill anyone who was hiding up in this old keep, except for more of the old soldier’s fighters who might be coming in from the other side.
Ralan Bek found his head swimming, so with a grunt he shoved aside all thoughts except finding the author of the noise he had heard in the darkness. He picked up his pace, and almost fell face forward into an open pit. Only his “lucky feeling” caused him to pull back at the last instant.
He took out a small cylinder Nakor had given him, and pulled off the top. Inside was a bundle of sticks, one of which he pulled out. He recapped the cylinder and put it back in his tunic, then waved the stick rapidly in the air, and after a few seconds a tiny flame erupted from the end. As Nakor had promised him, after the total darkness of the tunnels, he’d be surprised at the amount of light the small burning stick could provide.
Bek looked down at a pit that yawned at his feet, and couldn’t see the bottom. He was glad he hadn’t fallen, not because he feared injury, but because he would have had to wait at the bottom until the old soldier’s fighters caught up with him. He didn’t know if they’d even notice until one of them fell in, and he didn’t relish the notion of one of them landing on top of him; and he didn’t know if they’d bring enough rope to haul him out.
He took two steps back then with a powerful stride launched himself above the pit and landed easily on the other side, a dozen feet away from his takeoff. He dropped the flaming stick to the floor, grinding it under his boot heel.
He paused to see if anyone might have heard his landing, and when he was certain he had gone unnoticed, he continued down the hall. For an instant he wondered if he should have left something to warn the soldiers behind him of the pit. Then he wondered where that thought had come from; why should he worry if one of the old soldier’s men fell into the pit? This was too difficult to consider now: it was something Nakor would understand. He had no time to dwell on it.
Ahead he could hear faint voices, and he knew mayhem awaited.
Magnus studied the sky and judged that it was time to move, so he signaled to two guards to accompany him up the long entryway to the ancient keep. The road appeared to have not been in use for years, but Magnus had secretly inspected it at dawn and saw by tiny signs that the “disuse” had been artfully forged. Someone had been using this road recently, but endeavoring to keep that fact a secret. That as much as anything convinced him that his father’s faith in Joval Delan, the hired mind reader, had not been misplaced. Some local bandit, smuggler, or gang of errant youths would not have the means or inclination to do so thorough a job.
The soldiers had been creeping up the draw known as Cavell Run, which was the only obvious approach to the ancient keep. Magnus was not the student of things military his father and brother were, but even he could imagine what a lethal prospect attempting to storm this keep would present. Only the rumors of demonic possession and a curse, followed by nearly a century of peace in the region, would have kept such an obvious military asset unused.
Still, he had other concerns, the first of which was to ensure that the men with him went undiscovered for as long as possible. Magnus was still young by the standards of the most powerful practitioners of magic, and he had inherited certain abilities from his parents. His mother had always possessed a finer instinct for detecting the presence of magic than his father, though Pug was better able to determine the nature of a spell or device once it was uncovered. Magnus had the happy fortune to have inherited both abilities. And so he sensed and understood at least four magical traps located between the floor of the Run and the ancient gate at the top of the ramp.
With the deft moves of a master of his craft, Magnus countered each spell quickly, allowing the soldiers from Erik’s command to approach on silent feet. If there was a lookout above he would have been hard-pressed to notice the darting grey figures hunched over, moving along the edges of the roadway in the night’s gloom. The small moon didn’t rise for another hour and its light was faint even on clear nights. Tonight was overcast.
With hand signals, the officer in charge motioned for his men to make ready. An ancient drawbridge had once covered a gap between the top of the roadway-ramp and the keep’s gate. Now it hung by a single chain, dangling uselessly on the other side of the gap, an open space too wide for any man to leap. Signals were passed and from the rear two pairs of men ran forward, carrying scaling ladders that would serve as bridges across the chasm. Magnus used his skills to elevate himself and float above the breach.
He watched the men calmly walking on the ladder rungs, heedless of the yawning space below their feet. A misstep would send a man tumbling to his death. Magnus admired their discipline.
Now Magnus cast his senses forward, attempting to seek out more magic entanglements or lures, and found none. The warder of this keep had been content to trust to the snares left along the roadway to alert the residents of the keep to any unwelcome company. He strode forward, unmindful of any physical danger, for he sensed something in the distance that caused the hair on his arms and neck to stand up.
He held up his hand and a faint light shone from the palm, illuminating the killing ground between the now-fallen outer gate, where once a drawbridge and a portcullis had provided the first barrier, and the inner doors, which were shut and, Magnus supposed, barred from within. The soldiers behind him assembled silently. In the eerie mystical illumination Magnus’s pale hair and height gave him an almost supernatural appearance, but whatever discomfort the soldiers might have felt being given over to the command of a wizard was not in evidence as they waited for his instructions.
Magnus closed his eyes to better aid his concentration and envision the large wooden doors. He reached out with his senses and ran mental fingers over the surface of the wood, then pressed slowly through until he could feel the other side. As he did so a picture as clear as if he were using his eyes appeared in his mind, and he saw the large wooden bar set in two wooden brackets. He inspected every inch with his mental touch, then opened his eyes and stepped back. “There’s a trap,” he said softly to the officer who stood to his right.
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“What do you suggest?” the young knight-lieutenant asked.
Magnus said, “Find a way through that door without lifting the bar.”
He extended his hand and a faint humming could be heard by those standing closest to him. Suddenly, there was a hole in the bottom of the gate, large enough for a man to pass through on hands and knees. “One at a time,” said Magnus, “and have no man touch the gate or the walls on either side.”
The officer passed the word and quickly each man in turn made his way through. Magnus got ready to control the magic that would be unleashed should any man falter, but the preparation proved needless. Each man did exactly as he was instructed.
Then it was Magnus’s turn and he crawled through awkwardly, finding his robe an unexpected impediment. Halfway through the hole he was forced to lift first one knee, then the other, pulling the fabric ahead of him, so he could get through without falling on his face.
Chuckling as he stood, he said, “There are times, and this is one of them, when I feel the need to question my father as to why magicians are expected to wear robes.”
The lieutenant revealed himself to be a man of little humor as he asked, “Milord?”
Magnus sighed. “Never mind.” He faced the soldiers. “Stay behind me unless I tell you to move forward, for there are forces here that are more than the bravest man can face without my arts.
“Any man you see who is not Ralan Bek or one of your own, kill on sight.”
Then he turned and walked forward into the darkness, the light from his hand bobbing like a swinging lantern’s.
Bek walked as if strolling down a street, mindless of the darkness. There was light coming from several distant rooms at the ends of tunnels which crossed the one he had chosen, but he ignored them, and kept going straight ahead. He didn’t know how he knew, but he sensed that he needed to move straight from the secret entrance at the rear of the keep to the innermost chamber, which was probably some ancient great hall or throne room.
He felt positively buoyant in anticipation of the coming fight. He liked some of the things Nakor made him do, but he hadn’t been in any sort of combat for far too long. He’d bashed a few skulls in a tavern or two, but there had been no serious bloodletting since he’d killed that emperor for Nakor the year before. That had been fun. He almost laughed aloud thinking of the stunned expressions on the faces of everyone looking up at where he stood, his sword thrust straight through the old man’s back.
A man wearing black armor but no helm walked around a corner and before he stopped moving, Ralan Bek had run his sword point into the man’s throat, which was exposed above the cuirass. The man dropped with a fairly loud noise, but Bek didn’t care. Less than a hundred feet ahead light beckoned and he was anxious to bring havoc.
He strode down the last length of shadowy hall into a high-ceilinged chamber. It was an old-style keep hall, where in the dead of winter the family and close retainers of the original ruler of Cavell Keep would sleep during winter’s coldest nights. Once magnificent, the great hall had fallen into drab disrepair.
The vaulted roof was still supported by massive wooden beams so ancient they were as hard as steel, but the once whitewashed walls were now dark grey, and high in the darkness above, Bek could hear bats fluttering. No tapestries hung on the walls to shield the inhabitants against winter’s chill in the stones, nor were there rugs on the floor. But a fire burned in the massive fireplace to the left of the door through which he entered. Sword drawn and with a maniac’s grin in place, he surveyed the two dozen men resting before the fire.
In the center of this group sat two men, both in large chairs made in an older style—a u of wood set on top of another to make the legs, with a wooden back nailed across the upper half, stuffed with cushions or furs. The rest sat on camp stools or on black cloaks spread on the floor. All were dressed in black armor, the hallmark of the Nighthawks, except for the two men in the center. One wore a tunic of finely woven linen and trousers and boots worthy of a highborn noble, though his clothes hung loosely on this frame, as if he had lost a great deal of weight lately; the other wore the black robes of a cleric or magician. The man in the tunic wore a heavy amulet of gold around his neck, identical to the black amulet Bek had been shown by Nakor. The robed man wore no jewelry whatsoever. He was thin and there wasn’t a hair on his face or head.
A moment after Bek appeared the eighteen seated men were scrambling, two blowing bone whistles that sent a shrieking alarm throughout the keep.
The man with the gold around his neck looked harried, and his eyes were wide as he pointed at Bek, screaming, “Kill him!”
As the first swordsman raised his sword, Bek gripped his own weapon with two hands, his eyes narrow slits, focusing with keen anticipation on the coming slaughter. But the robed man shouted, “No! Halt!” His eyes locked onto Bek’s in wonder.
Everyone, including Bek, froze as the man wove between the swordsmen. He passed the man closest to Ralan Bek, and came straight toward the young warrior. Bek sensed some strange power in this man, and his lucky feeling told him something unusual was about to happen. He hesitated, then began to swing at the man in the robe.
The man held up his hand, not in defense, but in supplication. “Wait,” he said as Bek hesitated again. He reached out slowly, almost gently, and put his hand on Bek’s chest, and said again, “Wait.”
Then slowly the robed man went to his knees and in a voice that was little more than a whisper, he said, “What does our master bid us?”
The man with the amulet looked on in mute astonishment, then he, too, went to his knees, followed moments later by every other man in the room. Another half a dozen men ran into the hall from other parts of the keep, answering the alarm. Seeing their brethren on their knees, their eyes lowered, they followed suit.
Bek’s sword lowered a little. “What?”
“What does our master bid us?” asked the robed man again.
Bek tried to puzzle out what to say next, from what he had overheard Nakor, Pug, and the others say at Sorcerer’s Isle. At last he said: “Varen’s gone. He’s fled to another world.”
“Not Varen,” said the robed man. “He was highest among our master’s servants.” The man slowly reached out and touched Bek on the chest. “I can feel our master, there, inside you. He lives within you; he speaks through you.” He raised his eyes to Bek’s again, and asked once more, “What does our master bid us?”
Bek had been ready for combat, and this was beyond his ability to comprehend. Slowly, he looked around the room, rising frustration in his voice as he said, “I don’t know…” Then suddenly, he raised his sword and brought it down, shouting, “I don’t know!”
Minutes later Magnus rushed into the room with a company of Erik’s soldiers at his back, and more Kingdom soldiers entered through the same door as Bek. All of them stopped at the scene before them. Twenty-six corpses littered the floor, but there was no sign of a struggle. Twenty-six headless bodies lay in a wash of blood. Heads still rolled on the crimson stones and blood-soaked cloaks.
The fire crackled. Bek stood beside it, covered in blood. His arms were crimson to the elbows and gore was smeared across his face. He stood like a fiend possessed by madness. Magnus could see it in his eyes. He was trembling so much he looked like a man about to go into convulsions.
Finally, Ralan Bek threw back his head and gave out a howl which rang off the stones high above. It was a primal burst of rage and frustration, and when even the echoes had passed away, he looked around the room, then directly at Magnus. Like a petulant child he pointed to the corpses, and said, “This wasn’t fun!”
He wiped his sword on the tunic of a nearby corpse, and sheathed it. Then he picked up a bucket of water which had been set near the fireplace to heat and lifted it, letting it wash down over his head, without even bothering to remove his hat, and then picked up a relatively clean cloak to use as a towel. Cleaning himself off as best he could, Bek said in a more controlled tone, “It?
??s not fun if they don’t fight back, Magnus.” He looked around the room and then said, “I’m hungry. Anyone got anything to eat?”
FIVE
PREPARATION
Miranda shouted.
“Are you mad?” she cried, far louder than was necessary in the small room.
Magnus watched his mother with guarded amusement as she strode away from her husband’s desk for as far as she could in the small study, then turned with a dramatic frown. She often would vent loudly over matters that eventually would end up exactly as his father wished them to be. But Pug had over the years come to understand that his wife’s often volatile nature required a physical expression of her frustrations.
“Are you mad?” Miranda shrieked for the second time.
“No more than you were to spend almost a half-year shadowing the Emerald Queen’s army down in Novindus,” said Pug calmly, as he rose from behind his desk.
“That was different!” shouted Miranda, still not through venting. “There was no Pantathian snake priest who could find me, let alone challenge me, and I’m the one who can transport herself without a Tsurani sphere, remember?”
Magnus saw his father begin a comment—probably on how Nakor, Pug, and Magnus were all becoming adept at the skill—but think better of it and say nothing as Miranda continued.
“You’re talking about going to an alien world! Not only an alien world, but one in a different plane of reality! Who knows what powers you may have there, if any?” She pointed her finger at Pug. “You don’t even know how to get there in the first place, and don’t tell me you’re going to use the Talnoy on Kelewan to anchor a rift there. I know enough about rifts to know that you could find yourself swimming at the bottom of some poison sea, or standing in the middle of a battlefield or any number of other deadly places! You’d be going in blind!”