Wizards’ Worlds (53 page)

“From us they may hide their thoughts and movements. But they can not close the sky
to those things whose natural home it is. Be sure we shall know, and speedily, when
they move against us.”

They did not leave their posts however. And Zackuth readied for action by laying up
pieces of rubble which might serve as well as his first lucky shot.

It was a long night, wearing on the tempers of all but Takya. Time and time again
Craike tried to probe the dark. But a blank wall was all he met. Whatever moves the
Black Hoods considered, they were protected by an able barrier.

Jorik took to pacing back and forth on the terrace, five strides one way, six the
other, and he brought down his bow with a little click on the time-worn stones each
time he turned.

“They are as busy hatching trouble as a forest owl is in hatching an egg! But what
kind of trouble?”

Craike had schooled himself into an outward patience. “For the learning of what we
shall have to wait. But why do they delay—?”

Why did they? The more on edge he and his handful of defenders became, the easier
meat they were. And he had
not doubt that the Black Hoods were fertile in surprise. Though, judging by what Takya
and Jorik reported, they were not accustomed to such determined and resourceful opposition
to their wills. Such opposition would only firm their desire to wipe out the rebels.

“They move,” Takya’s witch fires leaped from every point she had earlier indicated.
In that light she sped across the terrace to stand close to Jorik and Craike, close
to the parapet wall. “This is the lowest hour of the night when the blood runs slow
and resistance is at its depth. So they choose to move—”

Jorik snapped his bow cord, and the thin twang was a harp’s note in the silence. But
Takya shook her head.

“Only the Hooded Ones come, and they are well armored. See!” She jumped to the parapet
and clapped her hands.

The witch light shown down on four standing within the thorn barrier, staring up from
under the shadow of their hoods. An arrow sang, but it never reached its mark. Still
feet away from the leader’s breast it fell to the earth.

But Jorik refused to accept defeat. With all the force of his arm he sent a second
shaft after the first. And it, too, landed at the feet of the silent four. Craike
grasped at Takya, but she eluded him, moving to call down to the Hooded Ones:

“What would you, men of power—a truce?”

“Daughter of evil, you are not alone. Let us speak with your lord.”

She laughed, shaking out her unbound hair, rippling it through her fingers, gloatingly.
“Does this show that I have taken a lord, men of power? Takya is herself, without
division, still. Let that hope die from your hearts. I ask you again, what is it you
wish—a truce?”

“Set forth your lord, with him we will bargain.”

She smoothed back her hair impatiently. “I have no lord, I and my power are intact.
Try me and see, Tousuth.
Yes, I know you Tousuth, the Master, and Salsbal, Bulan, Yily—” she told them off
with a pointed finger, a child counting out in some game.

Jorik stirred and drew in a sharp breath, and the men below shifted position. Craike
caught thoughts—to use a man’s name in the presence of hostile powers, that was magic
indeed.

“Takya!” It was a reptile’s hiss.

Again she laughed. “Ah, but the first naming was mine, Tousuth. Did you believe me
so poor and power lost that I would obey you tamely? I did not at the horning, why
should I now when I stand free of you? Before you had to use Takyi to capture me.
But Takyi is gone into the far darkness, and over me now you can lay no such net!
Also I have summoned one beside me—” Her hand closed on Craike’s arm, drawing him
forward.

He faced the impact of those eyes meeting them squarely. Raising his hand he told
them off as the girl had done:

“Tousuth, Master of women baiters, Salsbal, Bulan, Yily, the wolves who slink behind
him. I am here, what would you have of me?”

But they were silent, and he could feel them searching him out, making thrusts against
his mind shield, learning in their turn that he was of their kind; he was Esper born.

“What would you have?” he repeated more loudly. “If you do not wish to treat—then
leave the night undisturbed for honest men’s sleep.”

“Changeling!” It was Tousuth who spat that. It was his turn to point a finger and
chant a sentence or two, his men watching him with confidence.

But Craike, remembering that other scene before Sampur, was trying a wild experiment
of his own. He concentrated upon the man Takya had named Yily. Black cloak, black
hood making a vulture’s shadow against the rock. Vulture—vulture!

He did not know that he had pointed to his chosen victim, nor that he was repeating
that word aloud in the same intonation as Tousuth’s chant. “Vulture!”

Cool hand closed about his other wrist, and from that contact power flowed to join
his. It was pointed, launched—

“Vulture!”

A black bird flapped and screamed, arose on beating wings to fly at him, raw red head
outstretched, beak agape. There was the twang of a bow cord. A scream of agony and
despair and a black-cloaked man writhed out his life on the slope by the thorn thicket.

“Good!” Takya cried, “That was well done, Ka-rak, very well done! But you can not
use that weapon a second time.”

Craike was filled with a wild elation, and he did not listen to her. his finger already
indicated Bulan and he was chanting: “Dog—”

But to no purpose. The Black Hood did not drop to all fours, he remained human; and
Craike’s voice faded. Takya spoke in swift whisper:

“They are warned, you can never march against them twice by the same path. Only because
they were unprepared did you succeed. Ho, Tousuth,” she called, “do you now believe
that we are well armed? Speak with a true tongue and say what you want of us.”

“Yes,” Jorik boomed, “you can not take us, Master of power. Go your way, and we shall
go ours—”

“There can not be two powers in any land, as you should know, Jorik of the Eagles’
towers, who tried once before to prove that and suffered thereby. There must be a
victor here—and to the vanquished—naught!”

Craike could see the logic in that. But the Master was continuing: “As to what we
want here—it is a decision. Match your power against ours, changeling. And since you
have not taken the witch, use her also if you wish. In the
end it will come to the same thing, for both of you must be rendered helpless.”

“Here and now?” asked Craike.

“Dawn comes, it will soon be another day. By sun or shadow, we care not in such a
battle.”

The elation of his quick success in that first try was gone. Craike fingered the bow
he had not yet used. He shrank inwardly from the contest the other proposed, he was
too uncertain of his powers. One victory had come from too little knowledge. Takya’s
hand curled about his stiff fingers once again. The impish mockery was back in her
voice, ruffling his temper, irritating him into defiance.

“Show them what you can do, Lord Ka-rak, you who can master illusions.”

He glanced down at her, and the sight of that cropped lock of hair at her temple gave
him an odd confidence. Neither was Takya as all-powerful as she would have him believe.

“I accept your challenge,” he called. “Let it be here and now.”

“WE accept your challenge!” Takya’s flash of annoyance, her quick correction, pleased
him. Before the echo of her words died away she hurled her first attack.

Witch fire leaped down slope to ring in the three men, playing briefly along the body
of the dead Yily. It flickered up and down about their feet and legs so they stood
washed in pallid flame. While about their heads darted winged shapes which might have
been owls or other night hunters.

There was a malignant hissing, and the slope sprouted reptiles, moving in a wave.
Illusions? All—or some. But designed, Craike understood, to divert the enemy’s minds.
He added a few of his own—a wolfish shape crouching in the shadow—leaping—to vanish
as its paws cut the witch fire.

Swift as had been Takya’s attack, so did those below parry. An oppressive weight,
so tangible that Craike looked
up to see if some mountain threatened them from overhead, began to close down upon
the parapet. He heard a cry of alarm. There was a black cloud to be seen now, a giant
press closing upon them.

Balls of witch fire flashed out of the light pillars, darted at those on the parapet.
One flew straight at Craike’s face, its burning breath singeing his skin.

“Fool!” Takya’s thought was a whip lash, “Illusions are only real for the believer.”

He steadied, and the witch ball vanished. But he was badly shaken. This was outside
any Esper training he had had, it was the very thing he had been conditioned against.
He felt slow, clumsy, and he was ashamed that upon Takya must the burden of their
defense now rest.

Upon her—Craike’s eyes narrowed. He loosened her hold on him, did not try to contact
her. There was too much chance of self-betrayal in that. His plan was utterly wild,
but it had been well demonstrated that the Black Hoods could only be caught by the
unexpected.

Another witch ball hurtled at him, and he leaped to the terrace, landing with a force
which sent a lance of pain up his healing leg. But on the parapet a Craike still stood,
shoulder to shoulder with Takya. To maintain that illusion was a task which made him
sweat as he crept silently away from the tower.

He had made a security guard to astonish Takya, the wolf, all the other illusions.
But they had been only wisps, things alive for the moment with no need for elaboration.
To hold this semblance of himself was in some ways easier, some ways harder. It was
easier to make, for the image was produced of self-knowledge, and it was harder, for
it was meant to deceive masters of illusion.

Craike reached the steps to the rock of the offerings. The glow of the witch lights
here was pale, and the ledge below dark. He crept down, one arrow held firmly in his
hand.

Here the sense of oppression was a hundredfold worse,
and he moved as one wading through a flood which entrapped limbs and brain. Blind,
he went to all fours, feeling his way to the river.

He set the arrow between his teeth in a bite which indented its shaft. A knife would
have been far better, but he had no time to beg Jorik’s. He slipped over, shivering
as the chill water took him. Then he swam under the arch.

It was comparatively easy to reach the shingle where the dugout of the Black Hoods
had turned over. As he made his way to the shore he brushed against water-soaked cloth
and realized he shared this scrap of gravel with the dead. Then, arrow still between
his teeth, Craike climbed up behind the Black Hoods’ position.

T
HE
thorn hedge cloaked the rise above him. But he concentrated on the breaking of that
illusion, wading on through a mass of thorns, intact to his eyes, thin air at his
passing. Then he was behind the Black Hoods. Takya stood, a black and white figure
on the wall above, beside the illusion Craike.

Now!

The illusion Craike swelled a little more than life size, while his creator gathered
his feet under him, preparatory to attack. The Craike on the wall altered—anything
to hold the attention of Tousuth for a crucial second or two. Monster grew from man,
wings, horns, curved tusks, all embellishments Craike’s imagination could add. He
heard shouts from the tower.

But with the arrow as a dagger in his hand, he sprang, allowing himself in that moment
to see only, to think only of a point on Tousuth’s back.

The head drove in and in, and Tousuth went down on his knees, clutching at his chest,
coughing. While Craike,
with a savagery he had not known he possessed, leaned ont he shaft to drive it deeper.

Fingers hooked about Craike’s throat, cutting off air, dragging him back. He was pulled
from Tousuth, loosing his hold on the arrow shaft to tear at the hands denying him
breath. There was a red fog which even the witch lights could not pierce and the roaring
in his head was far louder than the shouts from the tower.

Then he was flat on the ground, still moving feebly. But the hands were gone from
his throat, and he gasped in air. Around him circled balls of fire, dripping, twirling,
he closed his eyes against their glare.

“Lord—Lord!”

The hail reached him only faintly. Hands pulled at him, and he tried to resist. But
when he opened his eyes it was to see Jorik’s brown face. Jorik was at the tower—how
had Craike returned there? Surely he HAD attacked Tousuth? Or was it all illusion?

“He is not dead.”

Whether or not that was said to him, Craike did not know. But his fingers were at
his throat and he winced from his own touch. Then an arm came under his shoulders,
lifting him, and he had a dizzy moment until earth and gray sky settled into their
proper places.

Takya was there, with Nickus and Zackuth hovering in the background of black jerkined
guardsmen who stared back at her sullenly over the bodies of the dead. For they were
all dead—the Hooded Ones. There was Tousuth, his head in the sand. And his fellows
crumpled beside him.

The witch girl chanted, and in her hands was a cat’s cradle of black strands. The
men who followed Tousuth cringed, and their fear was a cloud Craike could see. He
grabbed at Jorik, won to his feet, and tried to hail Takya. But not even a croak came
from his tortured throat. So he flung himself at her, one hand out like a sword blade
to slash. It fell across that wicked net of hair, breaking it, and went to close upon
Takya’s wrist in a crushing grip.

“Enough!” He could get out that command mind to mind.

She drew in upon herself as a cat crouches for a spring, and spat, her eyes green
with feral lusting fire. But he had an answer to that, read it in her own spark of
fear at his touch. His hands twined in her hair.