The Starfollowers of Coramonde (49 page)

“The Crook
was consumed,” Katya pointed out, “stopping Evergray.” Springbuck closed his
eyes in sorrow, seeing salvation appear and disappear in moments.

“But hold,”
Swan objected, “the Trustee had been many times in Ladentree. Why did the birds
not respond before?”

“The same
occurred to us, and so that scholarly process of elimination came into play. We
started with a different, theoretical answer, and proved it by diligent research
through the library, piecing together Rydolomo’s secret in reverse, as it were,
and had a bit of information even Bey lacked. At the Lady’s instigation, a limb
of the Lifetree, cut to Her likeness, went northward as figurehead to the bow
of a ship. Do you understand?”

Gil blinked.
Shaped
like the Bright Lady?
“Angorman’s axe,” he blurted. It lay where Ferrian
had put it, under Hightower’s bench.

“No other.
The helve comes of a fragment of that figurehead. Wildmen burned the rest but
did not know, and hence Bey never learned, that one vestige survived.” Ferrian
drew the greataxe out of the dray, its haft looking like ordinary ashwood.

“The
Lifetree,” he declared, “come south by dint of the Trailingsword, when the
Masters think it safely consumed.” He pointed eastward. “And under that hill
are those healing waters it will call forth, and in which it will thrive. We
must take it there, sink it into the ground. If our star fails us not, it will
flourish again.”

Hightower,
clinging to life by insistence alone, produced from somewhere in his ruined
depths a spasm of a laugh. “Now must yon webmakers of Salamá be a-spin! Duped,
like any bumpkin, by the Lady!”

“I should
have brought more troops,” Springbuck muttered.

“Untrue,”
Ferrian corrected. “The Masters can only stop us by their arts, if at all.
Thus, I took this.” He handed the axe to Springbuck and showed Andre
deCourteney’s sword from its scabbard at Dunstan’s side. Unscrewing the pommel,
he pulled out the mystic gem-stone Calundronius. He held it up, chatoyant on
its chain. “This will negate all spells, but can protect only a few. So, I
contrived a purpose to keep our number small. Our only word now is haste, our
one purpose to see the Lifetree replanted. Not all our lives nor any other
price matters against that.”

“We should
tell the Trustee,” Swan suggested.

“No time,”
Gil coughed, head spinning. “It’s just us. Springbuck?”

“Precisely.
If no one objects, I will go in the fore with the stone, and let the rest range
round the dray.”

As Ferrian
relinquished Calundronius, Katya asked, “What if the Five muster some pursuit?
Were it not sound policy for one or two to stay back, to repel that? Edward and
I are well suited.” Van Duyn cleared his throat, resettled the M-l, and agreed.

“And,” added
Ferrian, “the team will need a Lead-Line Rider now, a job for a Horseblooded.”

Ferrian drew
himself up onto the wagon’s tongue. Nimble as a tightrope walker, he made his
way along, flipping shut each horse’s blinders. Used to that, the huge animals
waited, knowing they’d be expected to do their hardest work now. Ferrian
mounted the special saddle on the left-side leader’s back. In the Lead-Line
Rider’s perilous station, he whistled sharply.

Swan had
stopped long enough to lean in and brush Gil’s lips with hers. Hightower exerted
himself to say “That’s it! No one will take this life from us now, laddie!” But
his own face twisted in pain.

Springbuck,
settling Calundronius around his neck, wondered if the deCourteneys could
engage the Five for the needed time. If not, what hue and cry might the Masters
set on the northerners’ heels?

The desire of rising hath
swallowed up his fear of a fall.

Thomas Adams

Diseases of the Soul

AT the center of the Fane, supporting
the stupendous bowl of its roof, was a titanic column of granite, dozens of
paces in diameter. A small ring of light showed, far up the looming pillar, a
spread-eagle figure, hung upside down by the ire of the Five.

Yardiff Bey,
shorn of the accumulated powers of centuries, had been set there to wait. When
the moment’s emergency had been dealt with, the Master would exact a slow,
precision-pain revenge.

But that must
be postponed; the armies of the Crescent Lands were already within the gates of
the city. And if the might of the Masters was decreased, if the day had already
seen reversals undreamt of, still the brooding Five, defended by their spells
and their Fane, had few misgivings. Here, of all places, the Five couldn’t
lose.

Yardiff Bey,
bones vibrating, sinews close to snapping, stifled his pleas. Almost, the
subsequent punishments of the Masters would be anticlimax; they’d done the
worst when they’d stripped him of every favor and cast him aside like used
goods, discarded by the Lords of Salamá.

The Masters
readied themselves, in that cold unanimity Bey had always idolized. Their
common will began to coalesce; and weakened as their prepotence was, it still
awed the sorcerer. But in the midst of that amazing marshaling there came a
sound that even Yardiff Bey had never heard.

The Masters,
in one voice, wailed dismay. A single image slipped through their guards and
Bey caught what the Five had sensed on the plain outside their city, a sky
filled with singing, soaring Birds of Accord.

There were multifold
things in the gathered minds of the Five then: confusion, panic, anger. And
there was a hatred of the sorcerer, for this, too, was a failing of his; he’d
assured them that the last of the Lifetree was burned. The Birds, drawn by
instincts of their own, proved the Lifetree was coming again to its accustomed
waters.

The Lords of
Salamá grasped it no sooner than their apt Hand. Bey achieved a strangled
laugh. “Masters of Shardishku-Salamá,” he shouted, “how will you crush the
deCourteneys if the Lifetree takes root, and sends all your powers back to thin
air? Which of you is willing to go prevent that, leaving the spell-forged
safety of this Fane, and your mutual protection? And who will stay, with
strength diminished, and face the wizard and the Trustee? Decide! The Crescent
Lands are at your doors!”

It was true.
The Five had acted in concert throughout the ages, and dared not separate now,
with their powers so reduced. And now the deCourteneys spread their arms before
the doors of the Fane. Yardiff Bey had seen the only solution even before his
Masters.

He was freed
from his bondage, eased down lightly to stand in the ring of light at the foot
of the granite column. On him the Five must fasten all their hopes. “Go forth,
with the forces with which we shall arm you,” they instructed, “and be foremost
in our goodwill once more.”

Chafing his
arms and legs after their stresses, he sneered. “There is a higher price on
your Hand. Make me one among you; promise a station coequal with your own, then
I will do as you desire. Oath-take that now. Refuse and you perish, nor cares
Yardiff Bey.”

They howled
their wrath, but their terror was greater. The Five made hurried, irrevocable
vows, concretized by their own infernal sources. Satisfied, he agreed. All the
energy of magic, all the power of will that the Five could bring themselves to
surrender, flooded into him, expanding his strength beyond anything he’d felt
before.

He’d been
processing this information about the Birds. The last known wood of the
Lifetree had gone north, and only recently it must have come through Ladentree.
Bey’s agile mind leapt that gap in a flight of speculation. “Where is the axe
called Red Pilgrim?” he asked them.

The Five
stretched out their perceptions, ascertaining it, and told him; in the dray,
bearing hard for the mound of the Lifetree. Even then he found a moment to
admire the subtlety of it all.

So much
attention had been diverted to Bey that the deCourteneys had triumphed in the
issue of the doors, When the tall, wide doors of the Fane closed after them,
the siblings refused to permit the darkness to continue. The insistent
blackness fell back before their blue glow. Wrapped in azure light, they made
their way to the heart of their enemies’ stronghold.

As they
rounded the huge column Bey, guided by the Masters, slipped around the other
way, undetectable in the overwhelming presence of the Five. He knew that the
Masters must prevail, so long as the Lifetree was eliminated. Until the
deCourteneys were fully engaged, he would wait in the shadows. He must not
become embroiled in this battle.

Gabrielle’s
voice broke the ponderous silence. “Why do you Five love the night so well? We
do not fear to behold you.” She broadcast the light of her enchantments. The
Masters bore down hard; their art kept hers from illuminating the farthest
limits of the temple, where they waited. But their bloated outlines could be
seen, moving clumsily. No longer human, distorted by their own deeds and
traffickings, and made horrible to see, they hid from view.

“Nor do we
hesitate to name you!” she proclaimed. Andre added his imperative to hers; the
walls of the Fane trembled. “First, Skaranx, whose high charge and honor was to
guard the Lifetree, and who chose instead to destroy it.”

To one side,
a long, serpentine shape writhed, hearing its name and crime.

“Temopon,
seer for the Unity, who vowed sound counsel but rendered lies. So did your will
become Amon’s.” Next to Skaranx, the barely seen form of Temopon stirred
uncomfortably, like a slug near a flame.

“Vorwoda, who
was her husband’s buttress and confidante. Poisoning his mind, you made him
ripe for tragedy, earning demon’s gifts.” The reigning beauty of the world in
ages past, Vorwoda gave a scream from the shadows, thrashing grotesque,
insectile limbs in her mossy bed.

“Kaytaynor,
the Supreme Lord’s most valued friend, who slew him from envy and lust for
Vorwoda. Your love is long since turned to abhorrence. Did you think to steal
what you did not merit?” Kaytaynor, his swollen body twisted and bent, tried to
reject what he heard, radiating his resentment.

“Lastly,
Dorodeen. And where are there words to denounce you? Not brave enough or wise
enough for the loftiest seat in the Unity, yet clever enough to breed treason,
and so bring it down. Worst of all are you, for you loved the Unity, but cast
it low because you could not rule it.” Dorodeen, the Flawed Hero, who had ended
an entire civilization to salve his own inquietude, moved not at all. He
repressed the only thing he feared, his memories, and waited, impassive as a
crag of ice.

The Masters
were assailed by a second excruciating, lucid understanding of what they’d
become. Then they hid from it, and struck at the deCourteneys with all their
weight of evil.

But their
strength was less than it had been. Andre and Gabrielle pooled their powers,
and withstood it. Furnace heat and arctic cold skirmished, and the Fane
rumbled. But the interlopers deflected every onslaught with anti-spells of
their own. Then deCourteney magic erupted. Riding the crest of their emotions,
the two counterattacked.

The energies
warred, unseen by the eye but palpable enough to set Gabrielle’s fiery hair
floating, riding their currents.

This was
Bey’s moment. He extended his arms, while militant winds cracked his black
robes around him. First, he’d need a means of travel. With puissance he’d never
known before, he ripped aside the curtains of the half-world, and summoned it
to him. In an instant his desire was filled, rearing above him, taking the
shape of a horse of smoke, of night-black substances of dread borrowed from
dreams. It was even taller at the shoulder than a dray horse of Matloo, its
breath hot and sulfurous. Its eyes beamed yellow malevolence, and its restless
hooves of polished jet left the rock beneath them glowing from their touch. The
nightmare horse shrilled, then bowed knee to Yardiff Bey. He scrambled up to
its back, sinking his fingers into the coarse tangles of its long mane.

He swept out
across the Fane. The Masters redoubled their assault on the deCourteneys, so
that the sorcerer would go unhindered. Outside, the northerners ran for safety
as the mountainous doors crashed open. Bey blurred past with such speed it
seemed a black wind had blown by. The soldiers heard his demoniac laugh echoing
back along the boulevard.

The
detonations of the doors, slamming open, rolled across the Fane in a shock
wave. Gabrielle spun, thinking it an attack from the rear. Sensing that, the
Five spent a major effort. But the offensive burst like a comber off Andre’s
stubborn wards; he’d let his concentration fail once, on the Isle of Keys, and
had vowed it would never happen again. Alone, he held, sweat streaming down his
face, nails digging into his palms until blood seeped. He was driven backward
bodily, pressed to his limits.

All that was
in the moment Gabrielle turned. Now she was back, supporting Andre with her
arm, shaping a shield against which the Five could do nothing. She dispatched
enchantments that rocked the foundations of the Fane, far down in the roots of
the earth, and lit the entire room. Shrinking from the light of her sorcery,
the Masters sped their total fury at her.

Gabrielle
deCourteney, reaching her zenith, bolstered by emotions not unlike the
Berserkergang, converted the Fane of the Masters into a crucible of magic.

Yet is every man his greatest
enemy and, as it were, his own executioner.

Sir Thomas Browne

Religio Medici

YARDIFF Bey bore down on the arch
of Salamá’s entrance. One of the men on watch just found time to leap aside;
the other, frozen in his tracks by surprise, was trampled under the hooves of
the hellhorse, his flesh crumbled and scorched by its passing.