The Starfollowers of Coramonde

Protocols of the
Sword

IN a narrow ring of light in
unmeasured darkness stood the Accused.

His head was
bowed, hands clasped together within long sleeves—flesh seeking its own contact
for reassurance, in vain. An arraignment in Shardishku-Salamá, these
proceedings were unconcerned with justice. Their function was retribution. The
Accused was aware of punishments available here; that was a form of punishment.

Yardiff Bey
felt nothing change in the enormous Fane of the Masters. Yet between one moment
and the next he knew the attention of the Five was upon him. No indication
escaped to his face or posture, but in a shielded cinderbox in his soul, fears
blew brighter.

He damped
them down. Was he not first among sorcerers, subordinate only to the Masters?
Brief, awful elation fanned up his spine at the thought. In flying back to
Shardishku-Salamá in his demon-ship,
Cloud Ruler:
to plead before the vindictive
Lords of the City, Yardiff Bey had taken his greatest dare. He was in more
hideous danger than most men could envision in wildest speculation.

A waitingness
hung around him, and cruel, dispassionate curiosity. He’d always exulted in the
cold intellects of the Five, but now it was their displeasure directed at him.
The single beam of light glinted from the strange ocular that was bound in
place where his left eye had once been. He sent a stern command through every
part of himself, physical and incorporeal:
Be still!

He bowed
deeply, unhurriedly. When his voice came, it was impeccable in its calm
control.

“Masters,
your servant has returned. Will he be heard?” He sensed mirthless amusement.
Did They think he’d come on a fool’s quest for mercy? There was a vast stirring
somewhere in the colossal temple.

Yardiff Bey
was slammed to his knees, by no force he could see. Without his will, his hands
came up to rend the front of his robe, in mourning and contrition.

“List us your
failures,” came a disembodied command, “and number your faults.”

He was cast
headlong on the cold floor, held as a doll beneath a man’s boot would be held,
by the stacked, murderous weight of the will of the Masters of
Shardishku-Salamá. He sobbed for breath that wouldn’t come, and that weight
retreated the merest bit. He knew a meager flicker of triumph; he hadn’t been
condemned out of hand, and so had the opportunity to say on. He brought his
head up a degree, neck trembling with effort.

“Waste not
the tool,” he strained, “before it mends its errors. Let me make my
reparations.” He slumped again, drawing breath only with horrible exertion. He
felt, by tingling of images not quite seen on his inner eye, that the Five were
conferring.

The air was
suddenly icy, carrying thick, infernal stenches. There was a new, an
overwhelming Presence in the Fane. The sorcerer recognized its awesome
savagery. His patron, Amon, a chief among demons, had come, after ignoring all
previous pleas. Before Amon, even the Masters were silent, deferential in their
intangible, unmistakable way.

When the
demon spoke, words lashing like whips, the walls of the huge Fane shook in the
lightlessness.

“More
vainglorious plans, unworthy one? Are my agents in Salamá to be twice fools,
and trust you a second time?” Amon asked. “List
me
your failures. You
had the whole of Coramonde in your grasp. Your puppet-son was enthroned over
the most important country in the Crescent Lands. You had the rightful Heir
Springbuck trapped, along with the wizard Andre deCourteney and his enchantress
sister Gabrielle. How was all that dashed asunder?”

Yardiff Bey
groped for response. “I—I sent the dragon Chaffinch against them, oh Lord. He
should have slaughtered them easily. But they had with them the alien Van
Duyn…”

He faltered
for a way to tell it. “You know there are other universes, mighty Amon,
Realities sprouting from alternatives, like leaves from a tree. Van Duyn is
from another, and from it he and the deCourteneys plucked soldiers, and a metal
war-machine to slay Chaffinch.”

“Your
first
failure,” thundered the demon. “Masters of Shardishku-Salamá, witness it now!”

Yardiff Bey’s
senses jolted, as Amon conjured up those events again…

Through the
eyes of Ibn-al-Yed, mask-slave to Yardiff Bey, they saw the castle where
Springbuck, the deCourteneys and their little band were at bay. Ibn-al-Yed had
only to keep them confined until the sorcerer sent the dragon Chaffinch.

But there was
a disturbance in the air, a pushing-apart of the boundaries between worlds. A
lumbering, drab-green vehicle came roaring into the meadow. From it a man
emerged, confusion manifest on his face, some odd black implement cradled under
his arm.

It was, in
certainty, a trick of the deCourteneys. The Druid who’d accompanied Ibn-al-Yed
called up an air elemental, to undo it. But as the were-wind ripped at him, the
stranger brought up his implement. There were bright, stuttering explosions.
Druid and horse toppled, dead, pierced with holes by the otherworldly weapon.

Ibn-al-Yed backed
his horse away in shock and confusion. Yardiff Bey, his Masters and dread Amon
looked back through time, at the indecision in the newcomer’s features. He
wiped his forehead once, quickly, on an olive-colored sleeve. Over his left
breast pocket were cryptic letters no one there could decipher: US ARMY. Over
the right was another strip of characters, whose meaning they would come to
know: MACDONALD.

Through the
eyes of the late Ibn-al-Yed, the sorcerer watched that early disruption of his
careful design. The image receded, Amon summoned up another…

There was
revelry in Hell.

The metal war
vehicle had killed Chaffinch, but events had left Gabrielle deCourteney in the
hands of Yardiff Bey. It was an occasion of tremendous importance, enormous
success. In Amon’s mansion on the infernal plane, the demon’s votaries writhed,
ecstatic, to insane music.

Without
warning the Cyclopean doors burst apart in a shower of wooden splinters and
metal fragments. The armored personnel carrier revved down the center of the room,
treads chewing stone, engine bellowing above the din.

The machine’s
weapons cut loose, flashing ruin in all directions.
Gunfire,
as Yardiff
Bey was to hear it called later. The fugitive Prince Springbuck appeared, and
Andre deCourteney. Gabrielle was rescued, as explosions and gunfire purged the
chamber. Yardiff Bey had to flee, as Amon was humiliated by mad invasion.

The sorcerer
quivered, experiencing it again. No one had affronted great Amon that way in an
eternity. Now a last image…

Yardiff Bey
sat in his own sanctum, high in the palace-fortress at Earthfast, laboring at a
spell against the intruder, MacDonald, whose interference had persisted. Gil
MacDonald of the bizarre innovations, unpredictable deceptions and unlooked-for
influence, had thrown Bey’s equations out of kilter.

With this
invocation, sapping MacDonald’s soul from his body, Yardiff Bey would remedy
that. But he began to meet odd resistance; his enchantments were warped and
subverted. There was howling from his supernatural servants.

An armed
company appeared where the outlander’s naked soul should have cringed.
Springbuck, Andre deCourteney, Van Duyn and MacDonald himself, whole, were
among them. In seconds the palace-fortress was filled with fighting and dying,
crash of alien weapons, curses of combatants and belling of sword strokes.
Yardiff Bey made his escape by a barest margin aboard his flying vessel
Cloud
Ruler.
He’d lost, in minutes, his iron grip on Coramonde.

The taste of
that catastrophe defiled his mouth once more. Then Amon let the retelling fade.

First among
sorcerers, once the Hand of Shardishku-Salamá, Bey felt his breath heaving with
terror and resentment.

“And all of
that you will set right?” came the demon’s challenge, on a sepulchral wind. The
sorcerer raised himself to hands and knees with quaking hope. But his response
held only firm conviction.

“I swear it!
I have come back because I am needed. There approaches the time of greatest
effort, but greatest risk also. Let me play my part in the Masters’ mighty
labor, Dark Father, as I was meant to!”

He couldn’t
hear the current of thoughts that passed among them. Amon’s sawtooth voice came
again. “I see what is in your thoughts, for they are open to me. Your Masters’
might waxes plentiful now, but will be diverted more and more into the
enchantment they forge as time goes on. They must work undisturbed, and though
the chance of hindrance is slim, yet it must be eliminated. Begin your work,
search out that last source of peril. But be warned: your Masters and I, and
my
terrible Overlord, are engaged in other struggles, other enterprises. You must
be self-reliant, or be swallowed up in that final Night we shall found.”

Then Amon was
gone, between one heartbeat and another.

The ring of
light began to move, to lead the sorcerer back out of the Fane. He lurched at
first, drunk on the enormity of it, but his stride soon became surer, stronger,
with his incredible good fortune. Raw power swelled him, of magic and personal
force.

Yardiff Bey’s
feet were set, once more, on the thrill-path of conquest.

What are MacDonald’s
antecedents, after all? Dropout, drifter, product of popular-culture
eclecticism. His sole sustained adult endeavor revolved around a war that
estranged him from his society. An absurd background for a young man caught up
in meta-events!

from EDWARD VAN DUYN’S personal
journal,
The Infinite Parallax

TIRED, he chose not to sleep. Too
often lately, he’d awakened in saturating sweat, from tremulations of the soul.

Gil MacDonald
sat, without lamp or candle, before the dying embers of the hearthfire in his
room. In them, he saw racing horsemen and swords making hornet-darts of light
in the night. On a night filled with just those things, his lover had died.

He raised his
right hand, the one that had held the Lady Duskwind’s as her wound had stolen
her from him by inches. He drew it across his eyes, to wipe away memory; his
thoughts could seldom go far from her.

He’d been
snatched into Coramonde, with his crew and their armored personnel carrier, by
wizardry. After they’d been returned to their own Reality, he alone had chosen
to come back. He hadn’t counted on falling in love. In love, he’d never thought
he might lose Duskwind so cruelly. Bereft of her, he found his remaining desires
condensed, embittered.

He’d come
back to the palace-fortress at Earthfast only that evening. For weeks he’d
combed the Dark Rampart range, west of Earthfast, with an entire Legion of
Coramonde. It had been rumored that Yardiff Bey kept his flying ship
Cloud
Ruler
concealed there prior to his rise to power and subsequent overthrow.

Gil hadn’t
turned up a thing, not a whiff. Worn thin, short on the sleep he resisted these
days and determined to find the sorcerer, he’d balked at the
Ku-Mor-Mai’s
urgent request that he go back to Earthfast. When he’d finally arrived, he’d
found that Springbuck was closeted with some visiting big shot. He’d
immediately gone off to be by himself.

A soft knock
came at the door. Gil’s hand dipped inside his loosened gambeson, fishing out
the Browning automatic. He padded to the door, the clammy stone making his bare
feet clench. The knock came again, discreet rapping a servant would use.
Nevertheless, he stood to one side of the bolted door, cocking the pistol.

“Yeah?”

“Sir, the
Ku-Mor-Mai
craves your presence with all haste. He has tidings of import which you must
needs hear.”

“‘Craves my
presence,’” Gil muttered. “Okay, tell him I’m coming, be right along.”

He wondered
why Springbuck would want conversation in the middle of the night. He sat on
his wide, empty bed, sighing and pulling his boots on. A new thought made him
pause. Maybe Springbuck had picked up on something about Bey?

His sword,
byrnie and other gear he left on the floor, in a burst of enthusiasm born of
enmity.

Springbuck,
Protector-Suzerain of Coramonde—
Ku-Mor-Mai,
in the Old Tongue—had been
up late with affairs of state, in his comfortable study. Its curtains were
fastened across high windows, and a fire crackled in the hearth. Burnished
lamps of brass and crystal lit it warmly, and thick furs and pelts were strewn
on the floor.

He’d no
sooner finished conferring with the envoy of the Mariners when his seneschal
had announced Van Duyn and the Princess Katya. He’d had them admitted at once.
Dirty, spent from days of hard riding, they’d told their story, their grave
words interweaving.