That Way Lies Camelot (32 page)

* * *

She awakened, ice-cold, and shivering uncontrollably. Night had gone gray with new dawn, and the wind carried promise of heavy rain. Skyfire opened her eyes. Weakly she attempted to sit up.

Hard hands shoved her back, crashed her bruisingly onto stone. The impact shot pain from her injury clear down her arm to her shoulder. Shock knocked the breath from her lungs. Through a sucking tide of darkness, she saw a face, and tangled hair, and a raggedy, leather-clad elf. His features were familiar. Through dizziness, Skyfire strove to remember.

'Stonethrower?' she murmured; and vertigo fell sharply away before memory. This elf was an outsider, an exile, not among the faces of friends who shared the howls at the holt. Fear followed, thick enough to choke: Stonethrower had gone off with Two-Spear, his parting words an oath of undying vengeance for the plight which had befallen his chief at Skyfire's hands.

'You!' said Skyfire, recognizing through touch the memory of a sending that had ended in a fatal fall, it was
you
who pushed my mate from the ledge!'

Stonethrower did not speak. But the flash of the stone knife he raised above her body offered answer enough. He had returned only to kill her.

Skyfire rolled clumsily aside.

'Whelp of a starved she-wolf!' Stonethrower jerked her back. 'You won't escape. You've strayed too far for sending to reach the others. They'll have no warning from you when I return and kill them, one by one, until there is no tribe left.'

Strong and cruel and crazy, Stonethrower caught her hair, twisted her head to bare her neck to his knife.

Skyfire thrashed. Her reactions were muddled from fever, and sickness left her too weak to evade the blow. Still, she fought. Aside from threat to her tribe, her death would take the life of the cub within her belly, and the legacy of old magic bequeathed by the Dreamsinger might perish unborn. Frustration, grief, and an overwhelming sense of terror shaped a cry to a mate who was beyond all answer.

**KYR!**

Skyfire's sending framed the Dreamsinger's essence, just as Stonethrower struck downward.

A leaping streak of silver flew between. Song launched from the cave mouth with a growl of animal rage. He recognized the smell of his master's murderer, and Skyfire's sending rang over and over with echoes of the Dreamsinger's presence. Song's sense of loyalty blurred. He leapt for the hated attacker, bristling with a rending lust to kill.

Stonethrower sensed only movement; then the great wolf's charge overtook him. Committed to his thrust at the chieftess, he barely turned his head when the silver male's weight knocked him down. Jaws found his exposed throat and closed over gristle and windpipe with force enough to crush. Stonethrower dropped the knife. He never heard the splash as his weapon sank in the spring. His heels battered uselessly into stone as the wolfs jaws tightened and worried him, shaking elf flesh until the last scent of life was extinguished.

In time, Song tired of the corpse. He dropped it a short distance off in the forest, shook his pelt straight, and returned to lap at the spring. Once his thirst was satisfied, he raised his dripping muzzle and sniffed the dawn air for game sign. A moan from behind made him turn.

The she-elf lay where she had fallen. The hand outflung from her body smelled overpoweringly of hurt. The wolf whined. A presence was missing from his side. Restless now, Song trotted a few steps back and forth. The scent in his nostrils meant trouble; the hunter who should partner him lay wounded. Drawn by the mystery of pack instinct, the silver creature stepped close, crouched down, and began to lick the still fingers of the elf-hand.

He still worked at the task past sunrise, when Wolfriders burst from the trees.

'She's here!' called Skimmer to the others. Rising wind and clouds heavy with rain served only to increase his concern. 'Our chieftess is hurt. Sapling, run and fetch Rellah.'

Song poised, ready on an instant to run, to abandon the tie so tenuously forged in the night. But a familiar pack surrounded him, and the habit of companionship was strong. As the Wolfriders hurried to succor their chieftess, Song raised his head. Holding ground at his elf-friend's shoulder, he growled challenge to any who might dare to interfere.

The Renders

Stars flecked the sky when Jaiddon reached the headland that sheltered the town of Fisherman's Cove from the sea. Every turn in the deserted road showed the Pattern which secured all Shape on the Isle of Circadie against the Void. Delicate as knotted gilt thread in the failing light, its interlocking tracery of force was visible in the veins of the leaves, the curve of the hills, even the dry sand of the shoreline which stood against the tireless rush of the sea.

Beyond the headland lay a scene of devastation. As though smashed by a fallen sky, the town lay splintered in ruins. The sight struck the breath from Jaiddon's lungs. Not even the boats in the harbor had been spared. The beach glittered with the silvery, crescent corpses of a skip-jack's dismembered hold. Smooth sand lay sundered by a ragged gap that passed clean through the shore. Ocean swells rolled through the breach, unimpeded by shallows or shoreline, and on the other side, the land where people had once raised homes lay twisted beyond memory of patterned Shape.

Jaiddon could count the bodies. Trained since childhood, he could see the snarled remains of the patterns that held their spirits in life.

Air sobbed into his throat. Renders had undone an entire town as though its existence was no more solid than morning mist. Jaiddon hardly felt the path beneath his feet as he stumbled over the dunes. The Renders had gone on into the hills. Their trail would not be hard to follow, marked as it was with wreckage.

Anger and hatred gripped Jaiddon in the shadow of that levelled town. Would all of Circadie be undone, as Fisherman's Cove, until her tortured rings lost power and slumped into the sea? Jaiddon bunched the hands whose promise had set him against the Renders into fists. Perhaps if he released the solidity of the ground where the cursed beings stood, he could drop them into the deep. Certainly, that had never been tried. The Masters, all, were bound by oath to preserve the Pattern.

Jaiddon showed his teeth in an expression not quite a smile. He might wear a Master's Colors, but he had sworn no such oath.

Over and over, he was impressed by Circadie's vulnerability until, half blinded by tears of frustration, he was sorry he had not refused the Master's request.

He still found it difficult to believe the bedridden cripple he had faced that afternoon was the Master Shaper of Circadie. The Master whom Jaiddon had always known was a tall, ruddy man, black-haired and full of humor. His hands had been strong and capable, nothing like the warped, skeletal claws Jaiddon had seen trembling on the coverlet. And the face! Jaiddon flinched with horror at the memory of features deformed beyond all recognition.

Yet the eyes in the deep, crumpled sockets had opened. They were still yellow, not yet devoid of the life that once shaped the cycles of Circadie with such enviable confidence.

'I am blind, Jaiddon, though within, I can still Shape your memory,' the Master said. The light eyes closed. The ruined face smoothed as an image of a white-robed, barefoot novice with sparely muscled bones and hair the color of brass formed behind seamed lids. 'Jaiddon, there are Renders in the land.'

The Master's words drove a sharp spike of fear through Jaiddon's thoughts. Few could stand against the power of
Renders, outsiders whose disbelief could unravel Shape like a tear in knitted wool. Not even the Pattern of Solidity, foundation of all Circadie, was secure against the destruction such a mind could unleash. Blind and deaf to all but Reality, two of them had once blundered through an entire forest without perceiving the fragile power that held its existence against the Void. Everything they touched was destroyed, reduced in a moment to the flotsam from which it had been created.

'The Renders number three,' the Master Shaper said, snapping Jaiddon's paralyzed shock. 'They are shipwreck victims, dazed and delirious with thirst. Megallie thinks they are mad. Certainly, they are strong, stronger than any Render who has ever challenged the Solidity of Circadie. We are desperate, Jaiddon. That is why you have been summoned.'

'But my Lord!' Jaiddon stared with fresh horror. 'I barely passed my apprenticeship a fortnight ago!'

A nightmarish parody of a smile touched the Master's withered lips. Jaiddon felt his heart twist in response.

'Years and experience have proven useless against these Renders.' The Master Shaper spoke with difficulty. 'Varna, Loremistress of the Pattern, lies dead. Myself, they have broken. I can no longer Shape even a child's toy. Circadie is dying. I place her last hope in your hands.'

Tears spilled sudden and hot down Jaiddon's cheeks. He was glad they could not be seen by the man in the bed. 'What can I do that you could not?'

The Master was silent for a long while. 'I do not know,' he said at last. 'You are young. Your training is incomplete. But you are talented beyond all that have gone before, so is it inscribed in the Pattern of your hands. It is my hope, all of Circadie's hope, that you, with your untried, unchannelled power, might find means your forebears missed by the wayside. I realize I am probably asking your death. Yet, I ask. Will you face the Renders, and challenge their Reality with Shape?'

Jaiddon stood like a statue. Sunlight spilled through the window and branded a square of warmth in the sweat that chilled his back. He was afraid. Once as a child he'd had a cut that would not stop bleeding. It had been Shaped to health, but the man, the Master whose hands had wrought against the Void, lay dying of a Render's touch. Jaiddon swallowed again, and spoke.

'My Lord, the Renders will have me anyway. I may as well meet the Void in their path.'

But the blue tunic and white shirt of Mastery given him after his audience did nothing to ease his self-doubt. For all his alleged talent, Jaiddon could not even read his own lifepath. His peers had laughed often over that.

Black as oblivion, the Renders' path ran northward. Jaiddon could sense its presence without sight by the utter lack of resonance beneath his feet. Here and there, his step struck solidity, and he recognized the harmonics that answered. They were Megallie's. Newly appointed Loremistress in Varna's stead, she had been mending, perhaps after seeing the Master Shaper comfortable.

Her work had been cursory, her touch, unerring. Gazing downward through the darkness beneath his soles, Jaiddon saw where a Grand Axis of the Pattern was laid bare. Megallie had fused it, perfectly. He could not repeat her work. Years of training lay ahead before he dared attune to a major ring, far less forge one complete.

Jaiddon cursed. His earlier plan was no better than a foolish dream. Having seen the original Pattern of Solidity after which all others were formed, he knew himself incapable of breaking even its simplest curve.

Jaiddon moved on. Anger drained away and left a rocky bed of despair.

* * *

The Renders lay in a hollow beneath a tangle of scrub thorn, asleep. Jaiddon came upon them so suddenly he nearly fell into the ditch their unbelief had torn through the fabric of the ground. There were three, as the Master had said, opaque bodies dark as blight against the Patterned perfection of grasses fired like crystal by starlight. Even passive, the Renders' Reality radiated threat like a breath of cold.

Jaiddon shivered and fought revulsion. His ancestors had once been formed of substance, as these Renders were, but generations of Shaping had transformed them gradually away from Reality. Cast upon the sea as exiles, they had delved among the mysteries of the mind and the illusory laws of sorcery, and in their fusion, developed the art of Shaping. Circadie was raised above the waves through generations of effort. Ring upon ring of power, joined and interlaced, held its soil dry above the tide. From that framework, the Shapers of Circadie forced tiny allotments of wood, metal, and stone to serve the needs of many.

The Pattern and the Shape that was Jaiddon would not be visible to the Renders when they wakened, just as the grass, the trees, and the soil did not exist through their senses.

Jaiddon groped through despair for an action, any action, that might halt the Renders' terrible course. He knew from memory each passage from the ballads that described past encounters with their kind. But such facts were useless. The Master Shaper had charged him to abandon precedents. Jaiddon pressed damp palms to his temples. If Circadie and the people who inhabited it could be made visible to the Renders, their disbelief might weaken, diminishing their ruinous effect upon the Pattern.

The simple act of enforcing the shape that surrounded
t
hem would not suffice. That had been attempted already without success. Jaiddon decided instead to inscribe the Pattern directly upon the minds of the Renders. Surely even Reality's logic could acknowledge and accept the laws of solidity and allow Circadie existence.

Jaiddon took a last breath, unmindful of the thornbranch that hooked his sleeve. Substance never yielded its Reality easily, and a Render was a living entity, self-aware, and defended against intrusion. Prepared for struggle, Jaiddon closed his eyes and reached out for the thoughts of the Render who lay nearest. Had his training been complete, he would have known the Pattern of Solidity represented the framework of madness to the mind he sought to Shape, but he had barely won his novitiate, and in ignorance, he touched.

Contact opened a blind abyss of unreason. Jaiddon broke into sweat, strove to hold firm against a Reality whose nature commanded Shape to go molten and flow formless into the Void. It seemed as though his Pattern of existence would be crushed to powder beneath the weight of the Render's mind. As the first tremor of dissolution crept through the fibers of his body, Jaiddon cried out. So this was what happened to the Master! Panic thundered through the gaps in his being, twisting reason into a hard knot of terror. Jaiddon tore free.

He was drenched, shaking, and the echo of his scream seemed reflected in the quivering stars. Shocked by the enormity of failure, Jaiddon did not pause to review the nature of what he opposed. Instead, he flung himself recklessly into a second attempt. This time, he shaped fear into a bastion of support.

The Render flinched beneath his touch. He stirred and moaned softly as Jaiddon began to inscribe the primary axis of the Pattern behind his thoughts. As the secondary axis was begun, his protest became louder. Jaiddon tasted
s
weat on his lips. If he slipped, he would die. With remorseless determination, he bent the will that opposed him and fused the first of the seven rings of power.

The Render shot bolt upright and yelled. His companions roused at once, and the force of their waking thoughts threw Jaiddon from his feet.

'Sweet Jesus, Alaric, what ails you?' said one of the Renders sharply.

Alaric shook his head and shivered. 'I dreamed. Mary Mother, I dreamed I saw grass and trees, land.'

'Ye're mad, man,' his companion said. 'There's nothin' here but ocean, and this silly boat afloat on it.' He thumped his hand. Circadie shuddered in recoil. Bushes, soil, and a nearby boulder frayed like overstressed fabric, and vanished.

Jaiddon dragged himself to his knees, numbed beyond thought by the heaving dark that bloomed at the Renders' touch. He had failed. Though the effort left him weakened, he had to move clear of the Render's blundering presence and think of something else. Slowly, he rose.

The motion caused Alaric to whirl, eyes widened in panic. The incomplete Pattern within his mind allowed him partial sight of the Shape surrounding him, and he yelled hoarsely. 'Almighty God, there's a ghost!'

'Alaric, ye fool! Ye'll have yerself overboard!' A companion jerked him back by the shoulder, then fixed a flat gaze upon the spot where Jaiddon stood. 'No ghost there, man. Nothin' but sharks 'n' salt water.'

Unbelief struck Circadie like a stormwave. Shape shattered to fragments before it, land and the life it harbored flung piecemeal into the yawning dark of the Void. Jaiddon cried out as the ground under his feet came unbound. Every skill he possessed fought to hold his being complete against a rushing tide of ruin. Loose pebbles and soil slipped like lost hopes through his fingers as he tumbled between debris toward the restless ocean beneath.

His fall was broken by unyielding blue light; , a bar of the Pattern itself laid bare. Deformed like wax touched by flame, it had not yet parted beneath the stress of the Renders' unbelief. Jaiddon groped for handholds in the riven earth, dragged himself upright. Dizzied and confused, he forgot caution, and the moment his head appeared above ground level, Alaric screamed again.

The other Renders restrained him with difficulty.
''
Tis the devil's work, surely,' said one. 'A clear case of possession.'

Jaiddon dragged himself clear of the ruinous gap. The word devil meant nothing to him, and with uncomprehending eyes, he watched the Render who had spoken kneel over Alaric.

'Christ deliver us,' he sai
d. 'I never thought I'd perform
an exorcism for a soul in an open boat.'

More strange words, and the chant that followed was in an unfamiliar language, as well. But its effect upon the Pattern was instant annihilation.

Half a hill exploded soundlessly into oblivion. Jaiddon screamed. The Void rose to engulf him. He felt light, insubstantial as ash. The breeze off the sea blew through the rifts as the Render's strange ritual unbound the force that held him complete. Trapped in a rushing vortex of wind and dark, Jaiddon suddenly longed to see the disbelief that was destroying him take Shape. Shape could be opposed, and on the heels of thought came insight.

He had always been ridiculed as a dreamer, unable to master his own imagery. What if he broke precedent, abandoned control and coupled the result with his lifelong training as Shaper? Jaiddon cursed and laughed. Poised on the edge of dissolution, he threw his wild imagination free rein. It seized upon the darkness that gnawed him and clothed it with pictures. Though they reflected unrelenting nightmare, Jaiddon patterned them and gave them Shape.

Circadie flowed and changed at his bidding. Plant, soil, and twig mirrored the fabric of his images. Fast as thought could unreel, Jaiddon found himself in an alien place of red haze. The ground turned to ash beneath his feet, littered with the Shaped symbols of the Renders' disbelief, among them every desire, hope, and motivation that founded it.

Jaiddon stepped carefully between the glancing sparkle of gem stones, jewelled goblets, and the dirt-gray bones which were his reshaping of the Renders' dead senses. He had no understanding for much of what he patterned, nor was he given time to seek it. Jaiddon waited to see which form would seek his death.

They came as demons, three of them, savage and thoughtless as the unbelieving minds they represented. Starved, naked, and crowned by bleached shocks of hair, they moved through the shadowed haze of imagery, eyes sultry as candleflame, and forked tongues tasting the air. Jaiddon knew immediate fear at the sight of them. But their Shape was comprehensible. It could be opposed.

Bending, Jaiddon scooped up a fistful of ash and placed his will upon it. Form broke and ran fluid at his touch as he repatterned Shape to match desire. Controlled, that which seconds ago had been ash assumed the outline of a longsword. Jaiddon tested the balance, then grimly inflected the pattern of tempered steel.

The weapon in his hand warmed. Its rough surface acquired the glassy bluish sheen of the forge. Jaiddon shivered with impatience. The change would take too long. The demons had sensed his presence, and with a hiss like a water kettle, two of them charged. The patterning was not yet complete, but Jaiddon had no choice. He raised his blade to meet them.

The demon that rushed at his throat was impaled. It screamed and wrenched. The half-finished sword snapped off near the hilt. Jaiddon fended the second one away with his forearm. Teeth and nails tore like knives through cloth, then flesh.

Jaiddon bashed himself clear with his knee and thrust the demon back with the jagged remnant of his blade. It sidestepped and spat. Jaiddon turned with it. The fallen one writhed underfoot, treacherously close. Nearby, the third crouched, watching with a baleful yellow eye.

'Render!' Jaiddon forced the word around the terror that gripped his tongue.

Nimbly avoiding the steel, the demon attacked, slashed, and twisted clear of Jaiddon's riposte. Thin furrows opened in Jaiddon's arm as it struck. Blood soaked through shredded silk shirt. Fear made the breath rattle in his throat. Circling, feinting, he survived
two more rushes. Sweat stung h
is eyes. The demon was still unmarked. The third crouched, still, to one side. Jaiddon knew he was finished when it chose to fight.

Raising his free hand, Jaiddon shaped in glowing lines that portion of the Pattern that sealed its final Solidity. The demon hissed in fury and sprang for Jaiddon. Patterning broke with an aching flare of light. The creature bore him down. Hot breath scalded his skin. Fangs mashed his shoulder, and the demon's nails gashed at his side and back. Jaiddon battered unsuccessfully with his hands. Dizziness whirled his head. All would be lost in a matter of seconds. Aware of nothing but the final darkness that closed over thick as water to drown him, Jaiddon threw himself into a last, desperate attempt to Shape.