Swords: 08 - The Fifth Book Of Lost Swords - Coinspinner’s Story (20 page)

      
“Oh. Oh!” The second monosyllable was a little brighter. “The man has a Sword, Coinspinner. I expect you know that. I’m going to try to get it away from him.”

      
“I’d be very wary about trying that. But, Adrian, son, I expect you can handle the situation, and I’m not going to take it over for you. Believe me, I have my reasons.”

      
“Yes, sir. If you say so.”

      
“I do say so. Now, I take it that gathering food was one of the reasons that brought you out for a walk in the rain. Have some snake, it’s quite good.” The point of a small dagger, whose handle had suddenly appeared in the Emperor’s hand, came out to probe at the roasting meat, and with swift delicacy separated a sizable chunk from the remainder hanging on the spit.

      
Adrian accepted the hot gift in callused fingers, and a moment later he was chewing. “This’s good. Mmm. Thanks.”

      
“You’re quite welcome. Here, have some more. I’d send you back to your—can I call them companions?—with some more of this, but I fear they might be overly curious as to where you got it. But let me show you a little trick, and you can catch another snake. All you need is a forked stick, and it’s easy to avoid the fangs.”

* * *

      
Less than half an hour later, Adrian returned to the shelter. He noticed that his small fire had been allowed to go out, but a good supply of wood remained, and with a little fakery it ought to be easy to pretend to be rekindling a surviving spark.

      
At Adrian’s entrance, carrying a live snake, Amelia recoiled. Still lying in the dust, she stirred and pulled her dress straight, checking to see that all the fastenings were in place. But Marland, who had been squatting near her, jumped up and came forward rubbing his hands together, his eyes alight, when he saw the fat snake coiled around Adrian’s arm, the fanged jaws rendered helpless by the boy’s grip just below the head.

      
Marland got the idea at once. “Hey, Mudrat, you’re a great provider!”

      
Coinspinner was produced, and in Marland’s jealous grip did excellent mundane work in severing the serpent’s head, then quickly skinning and cleaning what remained. By that time Adrian had a spit ready, and the fire going again.

      
Before dark their downstream journey was resumed. Marland said he wanted to travel as far as possible before camping for the night.

Chapter Fifteen

      
In an effort to save time, and feeling confident in his own skills, Karel had elected to guide this small party into the City through one of its more dangerous entrances. Several times in the course of the journey, serious-looking obstacles had loomed, physical barriers or virtual walls of magic. But so far the old wizard had led them through the difficulties safely.

      
Karel and Rostov, their semi paroled prisoners Murat and Kebbi, and the half-dozen Tasavaltan troopers with them had now reached the area within the City of Wizards that was their goal. All of them were now contemplating their strange surroundings, made all the stranger by the devastation wrought by an earth-elemental. That at least was the agency assigned by Karel.

      
Whatever the cause of it might have been, Murat observed privately, it was obvious at first glance that some violence on a large scale had occurred here, not long ago. Some mighty force had smitten the surface of the earth at this point, whether from above or below he could not say, and the land was still scarred with radii of cracks that looked as if they might be healing. The land was still up thrust slightly here and there. Walls had fallen down, and trees. Many of the latter had been uprooted and their foliage was dead or dying now.

      
The little river that followed a crooked trench through the middle of this scene of devastation was now running calmly enough, but it was easy to see that its previous course had been somewhat disrupted. A low place, that might once have formed an extensive pond, was now a small sea of mud, drying and cracking around the edges under the pressure of the City’s peculiar and sometimes multiple sun.

      
As the Tasavaltan wizard had several times assured his companions, time flow in the City was apt to be different from outside, so it was very difficult to judge how long they had been here already, or how long their mission was going to take. In any case, their efforts in getting here had already used up more time than the wizard had hoped they were going to have to spend.

      
Again, now that they were in the City, Murat and Kebbi each had a trooper assigned to him as guard. It was not, Rostov assured Karel, that the General did not trust the strength of the wizard’s guardian spells. Rather it was that the Tasavaltan cavalrymen had little else to do anyway.

      
As for the two Culmians themselves, so far they were coexisting in an uneasy truce. They eyed each other with suspicion and spoke to each other only when absolutely necessary.

      
“Are we to set up a camp, then?” Rostov demanded of Karel, who sat his mount beside him. “Or can you tell at once which way we ought to go from here?”

      
The old wizard appeared to ignore the question. “The Emperor’s Park,” he muttered, as if to himself, as he looked out over the bit of pleasant greenery adjoining the distorted Red Temple.

      
“Why do you call it that?” asked Murat, riding a little closer. He found his question ignored, as he had more than half expected.

      
Rostov could doubtless have found out if he had asked, but he was not that much interested in names. “Are you sure this is the place where the Prince dropped from sight?”

      
“Quite sure. The remnants of Wood’s magic are very strong. And there are some of Adrian’s as well.”

      
Karel now turned his attention from the tortured landscape, and focused on what looked like a most peculiar Red Temple, standing just next door. This structure was still in one piece following the recent upheaval. But still its shape was so distorted that Murat assumed it had been seriously affected.

      
“I have been here before,” the apple-cheeked wizard was now muttering to himself. He nodded. “Yes. Several times, though my last visit was many years ago. Much has changed.”

      
“I should think it has,” said Rostov practically. “Now how do you propose that we begin our search for the Prince? Or do you wish to leave that detail to me?”

      
The wizard was not really ready for that question yet. Shaking his head vaguely to indicate this, he dismounted and strolled about a bit on foot. Then he paused, turning away from the Temple again to point in the general direction of the muddy depression. “There used to be a pond here. A dam, a small dock, and pleasure boats- there’s what’s left of the dock, at least.” He indicated some planks and timbers lying forlornly in the mud.

      
“And this bit of land belongs to the Emperor, you say?” Murat persisted.

      
This time he got an answer. “Yes. Or it used to, when it occupied some portion of the mundane world. I don’t know how it got to be here in the City. None of his doing, I suppose. More likely some spiteful prank by one of his enemies.”

      
“I suppose he has many of those,” offered the Crown Prince, who was not at all sure that any such being as the Emperor really existed.

      
Once again he got no answer. Karel, getting down to business now, called for such help as some of the others could give him, in holding certain charms and mumbling words. He was soon able to ascertain that some very powerful trapping spells had recently been used at this location—and he was pretty sure that Wood was their author.

      
“Trapping spells?”

      
“Yes. Charms to keep a person or people in one place, usually by annulling their desire to leave, or indeed to do anything but kill time. Making them forgetful of their own affairs. Such spells can be very effective when done properly—as these would certainly have been.”

      
Rostov looked around in all directions. “No demons.”

      
Karel agreed. “I think not. Wood may have learned not to send such creatures against the royal house of Tasavalta. But it would seem that he’s adopted other methods that may work.”

      
Returning to his survey of the site, he soon began to provide some details concerning the elemental—or, possibly, more than one—that had recently been raised here.

      
“That, I’m almost sure, was the lad’s own work. And as soon as the elemental or elementals were raised, they came into violent conflict with the powers embodying the spells, or representing them … with the result that you see around you.”

      
“And the young Prince?” asked Rostov, sticking to the point. “What happened to him?”

      
“As I read matters, the result of the fight was that Wood’s spells were shattered, and therefore Adrian probably managed to escape with his life, somehow—we know that Trimbak Rao was here, shortly after the clash, looking the place over. I don’t know if he came back later, and managed to find out something new.”

      
“How can we be sure,” Kebbi put in, “that the Prince wasn’t caught after all, or killed?”

      
“We can’t be absolutely sure.”

      
“If he survived, if he escaped, where is he?”

      
“I believe he went downstream.”

      
“Then we can follow.” The renegade pointed with a brisk gesture. “That’s straightforward enough.”

      
“Not quite.” Karel went on to explain that only a little way downstream the little river before them approached an exit from the City, where it split into several little rivers, each of them with as much water in it as the original, and each assuming a different course across the mundane countryside. It would be difficult for any magician, even himself or Wood, to be sure which one of those branchings Adrian had taken, assuming the boy did go downstream.

      
“But what gives me the most hope is, that if he had been caught, his captors would be gloating now, and I suppose demanding ransom of one kind or another.” Karel paused. “Of course, as I said before, I cannot be absolutely sure that the Prince is still alive.”

      
“Well, given all that you say, sir, how do we conduct our search?” Kebbi kept trying to promote himself out of the status of prisoner.

      
Before the wizard could reply, a brief disturbance interrupted the searchers’ conversation. Two of the troopers were shouting for help, trying to get one of their fellows out of the hedge bordering the grounds of the Red Temple. The man refused to move, they reported, he wouldn’t speak, and he looked strange.

      
Karel, on the spot in a moment, soon had the victim free. Some remnant, it appeared, of Wood’s trapping magic was still effective, but by his art the Tasavaltan wizard had been able to push the obstacle away.

      
Another trooper spoke a warning: “Sir, someone’s coming.” The hooves of two riding-beasts were crunching through the ruins of a nearby building.

      
Trimbak Rao now made his appearance, a young girl riding at his side. The Tasavaltans, and Murat at least, rejoiced to hear from him that this was Trilby. Quickly Trimbak Rao reported that he had managed to locate the girl only yesterday, quite near here. She was essentially unharmed, though she had been lost for several days, wandering and hiding in the City in a state of shock and terror. She had agreed to come back to this place today, under escort, to tell Adrian’s great-uncle and his loyal friends whatever she could about his disappearance and her own difficult escape.

      
When the girl had been introduced to everyone, she looked around, and said in a low voice: “It was—it was just very bad. I thought I was starting to know something about magic, but then—this was happening to us, and I never knew it.”

      
Karel was grandfatherly, and very soothing. “Stronger magicians than you would have fallen under those spells in the same way, daughter. Be calm, now, and tell us what you can.”

      
Trilby did her best.

      
“Once the Prince and I got this far,” she said, indicating the place where they were standing, “it was like we just—stopped. We did everything but finish our business and get out. We talked about how strange things were here. We sat around talking about nothing.

      
“We even swam in the pool—or at least I swam, while Adrian went out exploring on his own. And then he came back, and I started out to have a look around—but I can’t remember any more.” She bowed her head helplessly.

      
“Try again, daughter. Maybe I can help you.” And Karel took the girl’s hands in his. He was probably capable of giving real help in this matter when even the powerful Trimbak Rao had not yet had much success.

      
A few moments later, the girl said: “Yes … wait. It’s starting to come back to me now.”

      
And now Trilby was able to remember the presence of a single canoe, drifting in the small pool above the dam, or rather tied up at the end of the little pier.

      
Karel appeared to find this very interesting. “What kind of a canoe was it?”

      
“A dugout. I remember thinking that was strange … and then … I remember thinking how odd it was, there was no magical aura about that canoe at all.”

      
Again the old wizard nodded, as if he found this of significance.

      
Then Trilby went on to describe where she’d gone on her solo scouting trip. At first with Adrian, when they’d just arrived here, and later on her own, she’d examined some of the strange architectural and decorative features of the Red Temple yonder. She talked a little about those strange things now.

      
But right now the most important thing in her own mind was that she, who had been in command of the expedition, had failed to see it through. Trilby felt very guilty about her failure. Especially about leaving Adrian alone at pool-side—

      
“Not your fault, daughter, not your fault. No one had any reason to suspect the kind of attack you both endured. Come now, tell us all you can remember about what happened.”

      
The discussion continued. Meanwhile four troopers had been posted as sentries nearby, while two waited in reserve. And some of Karel’s and Trimbak Rao’s powers were serving in the same capacity.

      
Haltingly, still struggling with her emotions, the girl told the listening men how things had gone for her on that terrible day, what she’d experienced when overtaken by Wood’s overwhelming assault.

      
“And then—then while all this foulness still held me in, it seemed like the earth was buckling up under my feet—that was Adrian’s elemental, I know now—and all the while, even then, the crazy voices kept soothing me, telling me I needn’t worry about any of it.

      
“I wanted to get away, and I couldn’t. I wanted to yell, to scream for help, and then I realized that I couldn’t even do that…”

      
Trilby, having finished telling the essentials, began to cry.

      
Karel kept after her, gently. “And you have no idea, no clue, what happened to Adrian?”

      
“No, no idea at all. I’m sorry.”

      
“It’s not your fault.” He patted her gently. Karel could be very convincing, and his assurance seemed to be at least partially accepted.

      
And shortly thereafter, Trimbak Rao departed with the girl. He was taking her back to his headquarters, where some of her relatives were waiting. He and Karel had made a tentative arrangement to confer later on what magical measures ought to be taken to locate Adrian.

      
Murat and Kebbi had been listening to all this with Rostov and some of the troopers. Murat, having given his word of honor, was not seriously considering an escape attempt at this time.