Swords: 08 - The Fifth Book Of Lost Swords - Coinspinner’s Story (23 page)

      
Amelia looked helpless. It was Adrian who had to ask the question: “So what are we going to do?”

      
The man flashed him a keen look, welcoming his eagerness. “I,” said Marland, “am going to stay in the background, with the Sword. In the gaming room I’m thinking of—it’s a very big room—there are little balconies, like box seats in a fancy theater, with curtains and all. I’m going to be holed up in one of those. You” —he pointed at Amelia— “are going to be bellied up to the table, a wealthy, bored lady, placing bets. And you, Mudrat” —the finger swung to Adrian— “are going to carry numbers from me to Amy. Carry them quickly and remember them carefully, without any mistakes. The numbers that I want her to bet on.”

      
Marland paused, frowning at Adrian as they walked side by side. “We’re going to have to find you a new name, Mudrat.” He scowled at the boy critically, as if Adrian should have known better than to adopt a stupid name like that, or should at least stop clinging to it so stubbornly now that times were better.

      
“Yes, sir,” said Adrian. “My name is really Cham. I think I mentioned that once before.”

      
“All right, that’ll do. Cham. Obviously we’re going to have to get you some clothes, even fancy clothes, because you’re going to be a page. Know what a page does? Never mind, you learn fast. We’re going into the big time, kid. Maybe you’ll need more than one outfit, because I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do all this winning in one session at the table … it would be better if we could.”

      
“How much,” asked Adrian, newly emboldened by being made a formal member of the enterprise, “are we going to gamble?”

      
Again Marland looked at him, welcoming an eager conspirator. “As much as it takes. We’re going to beat them, gambling. Walk out of that place with a ton of their money—and make it look like the fairest and most honest game you ever saw. Cheating? Not us. No way. We’re just lucky today.” He dropped his voice, now sounding almost reverent. “It could happen that way, you know. It could happen that way, for someone, without any magic at all. All it would take would be a run of luck.”

      
Amelia challenged him. “A run of luck like the world has never seen before!”

      
Marland turned to regard her, assessing the point judiciously. “No, not quite. Maybe once every hundred years, or every thousand, in the course of nature, a run of luck like this will come along. And we’re going to make our run look as natural as can be.”

      
Adrian, listening carefully, was becoming ever more intrigued with the challenge of doing such a thing and getting away with it.

      
The gambler was now explaining eagerly. “But we won’t need a straight run. See, Amy, I’m only going to call about half the bets. The rest will be your choices, made at the table. Some will be good and some bad, just the way it works for every other player. Some of your own bets you’ll win, and some you’ll lose. But all the numbers that I pick, with the Sword, are going to be winners. Overall, our winnings are going to build up and up—and then fall back, sometimes, when you pick a loser. Sometimes we’ll even lose huge amounts. So it’s going to look like nothing but pure dumb, honest luck. We’ll lead the house on and on, into a final wager—I don’t know yet how much that’ll be, I’ll have to do some calculating. Think that out some more before we start. But it’ll be enough to break their bank.”

      
There was a pause of several heartbeats before Amy’s voice asked, on a rising intonation: “Break the bank at the big casino?” The idea was finally getting through to her.

      
“That’s what I’m saying.”

      
“Won’t they have their own magicians working?” Adrian, for the sake of credibility, thought he had better voice more skepticism than he felt; he had more acquaintance with the power of the Swords than Marland did.

      
Marland said: “Oh, they have wizards on their payroll, all right. They have some of the best in the world in their own specialty, which is anything to do with cheating at a game. But the Sword will handle them. I’ll bet my life on it. Coinspinner’ll slice them up like so much paper, and leave ’em standing there with their pockets empty.” Amelia, struck by a sudden thought, was fingering her new dress. It was certainly a long step up from prison garb, but still—

      
She demanded: “They’re going to let me stand there in the big casino, at this high-powered table, and play, looking like this?”
      
Marland laughed. “You’re not going to be looking like that, baby. Not at all. Not by the time we get to the big casino.”

Chapter Seventeen

      
The Crown Prince Murat, physically unbound but still manacled by leaden magic in both feet, was following Karel, as the old Tasavaltan wizard led the entire party in a lengthy inspection of the exterior of the twisted Red Temple. By reason of sortilege Karel was convinced that the most likely way to finding Prince Adrian lay here. At one point the wizard paused in his examination, to point out to the General some ceramic tiles on the side of the building, tiles Karel said were similar to those the apprentices had been sent here to obtain.

      
Murat was willing enough to follow the two Tasavaltan leaders, meanwhile exchanging a few desultory snarls with Cousin Kebbi. Both Culmians could not help being distracted from their feud by the sight of a multiplex sunrise/ sunset. This, as Karel informed them, and Murat could well believe, was a phenomenon that could be seen only in the City of Wizards. Perhaps a dozen sun images were visible at the same time. About half of these, red and only mildly warm, were arcing slowly down toward the rim of the sky, even as the other half threatened to rise above it. All finally blended into one red glow that spread its way entirely around the horizon.

      
There was a mutter of satisfaction at last from Karel. But it was not caused by the celestial phenomenon, to which he had been paying little attention. “This is the way we must go in,” he announced decisively, indicating one of the many dark entrances to the Red Temple.

      
Rostov accepted the decision, and issued the necessary orders to his handful of armed men. The General was now wearing Sightblinder once again, its hilt coming frequently in contact with his hand or arm, and his identity tended to shimmer in the eyes of his companions.

      
The wizard led the way. Two troopers were left outside to hold the animals. Soon all other members of the party had filed inside the Temple, and the sky and its wonders had been shut out.

      
But hardly had they got themselves out of sight of the entrance when the wizard called a halt.

      
Beside him he beheld the General’s figure, going through the kaleidoscope of changes customary for one who held Sightblinder. Karel, for all his own powers, was as much subject as anyone else to the spell of images cast by the Sword of Stealth. The figures now appearing in his perception, one after another, included some from his far-distant childhood, as well as the eidolons of Ardneh and of Draffut. The latter appeared crawling through the dark passage, under a ceiling much too low for the god’s full six-meter height, displaying Draffut’s unmistakable mighty fangs, great manlike hands, and look of serene intelligence.

      
In addition to these figures, the cycle seen by the old magician sometimes included the dread image of Wood, appearing now as a blond, handsome demigod, armed with Shieldbreaker.

      
I had not realized
, thought Karel,
that I feared my great enemy as much as that, for the Sword of Stealth to limn him for me
… But he had not stopped to admire the images created by Sightblinder. He suddenly did not feel well. That was why he had come to a halt, leaning back against a wall, knowing that he must look uncharacteristically weary.

      
And now he understood why.

      
“Rostov,” he said. “Get those two other men in here. The animals also.”

      
The General gestured quickly to his sergeant before he asked the question. “What’s wrong?”

      
“Plenty.” Karel’s breath was wheezing loudly now. “There’s demon-smell and demon-sickness in the air. You’ll be able to feel it in a minute. Wood is striking at us.”

      
Murat and Kebbi exchanged uncertain glances.

      
“I mean the man,” said Karel, looking at the renegade lieutenant, “who took your Sword from you. He goes armed with a greater weapon, Shieldbreaker. And he comes now escorted by a flight of his great pets. It will be all we can do to escape him with our lives.”

      
The soldiers who had been left outside came into the Temple now, leading the riding-beasts.

      
Rostov, cursing, threw Sightblinder from him, in that instant resuming his own shape in the others’ eyes. “If he has Shieldbreaker, this blade of mine is not going to avail us anything. But we know how to fight against the Sword of Force. What do you say, Karel? I’ll tackle him barehanded, magician, if you can undertake to keep his bodyguard from killing me as I do so.”

      
Karel shook his head. “I fear his bodyguard, as you call it, is much too strong. He is coming after us in force, with such an escort as would make any pledge of that kind on my part foolish. If worst comes to worst we may have to adopt some such plan, but before we settle for suicide let’s try to get away. I hope we can make our escape in a direction that will allow us to continue our search for the Prince.”

      
Murat was beginning to feel the demon-sickness now, deep in his guts. He’d heard of such but not experienced it before. He could tell from the faces of Kebbi and the soldiers that they were afflicted too.

      
“I think we can escape, but we may well be separated in the process. Before we are—” Karel dipped a hand into an inner pocket, then pushed himself away from the wall. Moving swiftly among the other members of the party, he handed each man a small object. “Each of you is now in possession of a magical token that will allow you to identify Prince Adrian if you come within sight of him. It should also serve to show you where to seek the Prince, once you are close enough.”

      
Murat looked at the thing that had been placed in his hand. It was a tiny wooden cube.

      
Karel observed his puzzled look. “Part of a toy the Prince enjoyed in infancy,” the wizard wheezed. “Trust me, trust the power I have given it.”

      
Murat could feel the heaviness in his soles and ankles. He did not doubt this wizard’s pledges.

      
Rostov stuffed his own bit of toy impatiently into his belt. He was not yet ready to give up on fighting. “What if we leave the Swords out of it entirely, wizard? And if the demons could be distracted. Could you stand against him then?”

      
“Stand against him, one on one? No, I cannot.” Karel’s face and voice were bleak. “No magician in the world, I think, can do that … and besides, I tell you that he does come with a host of demons. We must escape him, if we can. Here.”

      
With a gesture, and a twist of magic, Karel did something to the wall beside him. Murat could not see just what, but whatever was done caused several stones to vanish, or move aside, opening a way into some inner recess of the Temple.

      
“Animals can’t follow us in here, sir,” the sergeant reported. Even if the newly opened entrance had been big enough, the dark passage beyond it certainly was not.

      
“Then leave them! Too bad, but it must be.”

      
In a few moments the men were all inside what Murat took to be a kind of secret passage, a dimly lit narrow tunnel through constricting brickwork. They were following Karel through this, at a surprisingly swift pace, when the assault of Wood’s creatures came down on them all, almost unexpectedly.

      
This was no mere whiff of demonic presence at a distance, but the awful thing itself. The attack fell first upon the mind and soul, rather than the body. Despite the fact that the physical masonry around him remained firmly in place, Murat had the sensation that the world was collapsing over his head.

      
Even worse was the inward sickness, taking possession of the bowels and bones. A fear that seemed to turn the guts to jelly…

      
The men were crawling now, rather than walking, with Karel still in the lead. The magician was muttering continuously, and it seemed that somehow he was managing to stave off complete disaster. The terrible enemy was near, but not immediately upon them.

      
And now the pressure of demonic presence eased a bit. Somehow, Murat thought, the old man’s got them looking in the wrong place for us. So far…

      
He kept on crawling, over the body of one of the troopers, totally collapsed. The man was dead, Murat was sure of that, for he could see the flesh already shriveling, as if being dried out from within.

      
Another trooper died as they crawled on. Wood’s onslaught came near overwhelming Karel’s defenses before the Tasavaltan could guide his friends to a yet more interior level of the Twisted Temple.

* * *

      
When the attack of the demons first fell on them, Kebbi, two places behind his countryman in the single line, thought that his last moment had come. But in his desperation he refused to give up. Rather, Kebbi took the opportunity which presented itself, and lunged out in an effort at escape. When the wizard led them past a place where the tunnel branched, Kebbi with a gasp turned aside, and flung himself down the branch Karel and the others had not followed.

      
Crawling farther, he realized with a sudden surge of hope that the bond of magic that Karel had put on him had somehow been broken. The pain he had known in legs and ankles, which had increased so rapidly whenever he had distanced himself even slightly from his captors, was gone now. Karel’s binding work had been dissolved, or else abandoned in the wizard’s need to channel all his powers into the giants’ conflict that now raged between him and Wood. The energy that had maintained the Culmians’ bondage was doubtless needed elsewhere now, as the great magician fought against a greater, for his life, and the lives of his companions.

      
Crawling and scrambling, realizing that the physical destruction around him was actually negligible, and that the demons’ attention must all be focused elsewhere, Murat’s cousin got away.

* * *

      
Murat, as soon as he became aware that Kebbi was no longer with the survivors of the party, started grimly back into the tunnel after him. Karel, Rostov, and the troopers had all collapsed, and no one tried to stop him. If the traitor should be lying somewhere, dead and shriveled, well and good. But if he had somehow got away…

      
The Crown Prince had not gone far before he too realized that he was now freed of Karel’s magical bondage.

* * *

      
Sensing that he was gradually leaving the battle between the demons and the magician farther and farther behind him, Kebbi kept on crawling until he saw a light.

* * *

      
Rostov was the first of the remaining members of the party to regain his senses. Finding himself stretched out in a small, almost lightless underground room, Sightblinder clutched in his fist, he cursed and forced himself to his feet. There was one doorway besides the one through which they had stumbled in.

      
Karel and the four remaining troopers were sprawled around him, all still breathing, but in various stages bordering on complete collapse. The General tried to rouse the wizard, but the old man remained practically inert; naturally the assault had fallen heaviest of all on him.

      
It was only at this point that Rostov realized that his two Culmian prisoners were gone.

* * *

      
The prostrate men seemed to be recovering, though very slowly, and none of them were able to stand unaided yet. There was nothing for the General to do but exercise patience, and in that art he had had long training. The demons were gone, and in half an hour, Rostov thought, his party might be able to get moving again.

      
Then came an all-too-familiar twisting in his gut, alerting him that the demons were coming back.

      
He could even tell the direction now. That way, through the other tunnel.

      
Gripping Sightblinder and setting his jaw, the General waited for his foes to show themselves.

* * *

      
Kebbi, pushing on alone toward the light, knew such gratitude as he was capable of when he felt the presence of the demons fall farther and farther behind him.

      
At about the time that presence vanished from his perception entirely, he found himself dimly able to sense some kind of threshold of magic not far ahead. He could hope, at least, that this would offer him a way of emerging from the City.

      
Proceeding carefully, now standing erect, he became aware of strange presences around him at varying distances. Not that they frightened him, particularly; after the demons, these ghostly half shapes were as nothing.

      
One moment those distant figures were insubstantial ghosts, and the next they were real forms, mundane and solid humanity.

      
But who?

      
Kebbi flattened himself against a wall in fear. As the folk approached, a dim and bulky shape came with them, and strange noises issued from it. A horrible squeaking. He had heard that demons’ voices sounded like—

      
He could see the people clearly now. Four of them, two men, two women, in shabby garments, and they were armed with mops and brooms. The noise proceeded from the wheels of the refuse cart they pushed before them.

* * *

      
After that, Kebbi had little further trouble in getting out of the Temple—though on doing so he was somewhat amazed to find himself emerging from the basement door of a Red Temple quite different from the one that he had entered in the City. He was definitely not in the City of Wizards anymore.