The Golden Shield of IBF (11 page)

“Was the wondrous and terrible weapon anything like this, Moc’Dar?”

He raised his gaze to hers, his eyes widening beneath his black leather mask. And he almost fell back as she pointed it at him. “Very—very much like that, Mistress General.”

“This is called a 1911A1, Moc’Dar. Do you want to see it spit fire, or do you wish to go on living in some lesser capacity than a human man? You have served me well, so I give you that choice. Choose carefully and wisely, Moc’Dar. But quickly.”

He paused, his body visibly trembling. At last, his voice subdued, he spoke. “Whatever is your will, Mistress General. That is my choice, only to serve your will.”

Eran pursed her lips. She could not decide this so easily. “As you know, Moc’Dar, I have plenty of horses, although I’m certain that you’d be an excellent mount. I must think. Stay on your knee. In fact, prostrate yourself there on the flagstones in obeisance to me while I ponder your fate.”

“Yes, Mistress General,” Moc’Dar responded, laying his body face down on the stone, arms outstretched to either side, not daring to look up. He looked quite ridiculous, and she liked that.

Still holding the item which she had taken from her spell bag, Eran slowly began to pace about the room, stopping after a time, beside Moc’Dar, raising one booted foot and letting it rest on his neck. “The object which spits fire, as you described it Moc’Dar, is called a pistol. The flame that you witnessed is not magic, but merely the flash from the burning of a mixture of natural elements. The loud noise which you doubtless heard, but failed to mention, is also a natural result of these elements interacting. What killed your Sword of Koth was not magic, either. It was something that is called a bullet. This is, to help you understand it, a very much advanced version of a crossbow, but rather than the tension of the released prod propelling the missile forward to its target with killing force, it is the pressure from the burning of these natural elements which I mentioned. If you understand what I have said, kiss my boot.”

Moc’Dar turned his head—the motion was visibly awkward for him, because her other foot still rested on his neck—and he kissed her right boot.

“So, you see, Moc’Dar, you ran away from something quite natural, not magical. What to do with you! My boots are soiled, Moc’Dar. You may rise to your knees and lick them clean for me while I continue to ponder your fate. But do not speak.” Eran removed her foot from his neck.

Silently, Moc’Dar rose to his knees, his tongue flicking against the sparkling leather of her boots.

“Keep cleaning until I tell you that you may stop, Moc’Dar.” Resting her elbow in the palm of her hand, Eran cocked her head back and contemplated Moc’Dar’s punishment. He had always been the most ruthless of the Sword of Koth. That was something in his favor. But, of course, his punishment had to be spectacular, a lesson to others of the Sword of Koth, and of the Horde of which the Sword of Koth was the elite. So it had to be an enduring punishment.

An idea came to her in the very moment that she looked down on him and took notice of the diligence with which he licked her boots.

“You may stop licking my boots, Moc’Dar. Raise your eyes to look at me, but do not speak.”

Moc’Dar obeyed.

Eran had never had a male body servant before. Of course, when he took up those duties, he wouldn’t be quite as male as he was now. Yet, the idea had a sort of appeal to it.

“I have determined your fate, Moc’Dar,” Eran began...

Alan Garrison sat in the snow under what he had learned was a Ka’B’Oo tree. The things were enormous.

Force of habit had made him act like he was taught to act when he went through Special Agent training. What did these people in another world, or maybe another universe, care if someone flashed a badge and shouted, “Freeze!” Alan Garrison had never killed a man before, in any universe. And, he could not help but think that his ineptitude in handling a unique situation had brought about that man’s death.

Swan approached, her boots packed with snow. Garrison looked up, saw her face smiling down at him from within the folds of her hood. She dropped to her knees in the snow beside him. “How are you feeling, Al’An?”

“I’m angry with myself.”

“No Sword of Koth has ever been taken alive, captured. You have done the impossible.”

“All I did was deck somebody and bust him. That wasn’t much. I’m an idiot.”

Swan’s pretty eyes widened in amazement. “How could you speak so cruelly about yourself, Al’An? You are—”

“All the time I’ve been with the Bureau,” he began, interrupting her, “I’ve always figured that guys like my boss, Matt Wisnewski, were airheads, idiots because they went by the book when circumstances dictated that they be a little creative.”

“The book?”

“You know, having a fixed set of responses for every situation and sticking to them—like rules that can’t be broken—regardless of the reality of the thing. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Swan nodded, “I think that I do. And you blame yourself for doing what you tell others not to do.”

“Exactly!” My God, Alan Garrison thought, a woman who understood him! Really understood him. It was just his luck, he thought, to meet the perfect woman, but she just happened to be from another world or universe, she was more or less immortal and she was in the middle of a war. With every moment that passed with Swan, Alan Garrison was becoming more and more certain that he loved her like he had never, ever loved anyone before or would again.

“We need to be on our way, Al’An. We have the extra horses from the Sword of Koth who were killed. We must ride to join with the Company of Mir near the old summer palace by the shores of Woroc’Il’Lod.”

“Is that an ocean?”

“Yes,” she told him, “an icy sea. At its center,” and she brushed a smooth spot in the snow, then sketched an outline with her gloved fingertip, “is the Edge Land, shaped like this. At its very tip, in the high coastal mountains, is Barad’Il’Koth, my mother’s stronghold, where we must go.”

Garrison studied Swan’s drawing in the snow. “So where we are now is known as the Land, and where we must travel over the sea is the Edge Land, which we could get to overland, but would mean traveling a greater distance. The Land is the principal continent here.”

Swan seemed to contemplate his meaning. Half the time, Garrison didn’t even know if he was using English, nor was he conscious of slipping back and forth between his language and hers. Everyone—the kind of neat old guy, Erg’Ran, and Gar’Ath—seemed to understand him, and he understood them.

“I see the meaning,” Swan went on. “There is but one continent here, connected by many wide expanses of land. The ocean flows around us, and it is made of many seas.”

“How many people are there in Creath, in your world?”

“People? There are—” Swan paused. “I am trying to calculate, and determine a reference that you will understand.” She shut her eyes, not making magic, he guessed, just thinking. She nodded her head, opened her eyes, said, “At one time, before the reign of my mother, Eran, there were many great cities, like Atlanta, but different, but with many, many people living and working in them.

“In those days, before I was born, the magical energy was used by all. Some used it better, more wisely, while others eschewed its use except for extraordinary purposes. Still others lived by its power.”

“So, your mother destroyed everything?” Garrison asked her.

Swan’s look visibly saddened. “Yes. She did that.”

“Why?” Garrison asked her.

“She was K’Ur’Mir—of the royal line, the royal blood. My ancestors and hers have ruled Creath since the time of Mir.”

Garrison wanted to ask who “Mir” was, but saved that for later. He was more concerned, at the moment, with learning why her world was as it was.

“My mother,” Swan went on, “was gifted beyond even the most extraordinary of our ancestors, gifted with the ability to use the magical energy. I don’t know why she did what she did, because she never told me. Erg’Ran, who, of course, knew her then, before and after, has told me that my mother devoted her every moment to study of the magical energy. She became obsessed with mastering all of the magic of the universe. That is impossible, even for her now, and she is the most powerful sorceress that there has ever been. No mortal, or immortals such as we, can master all magic.

“But in the pursuit of her obsession,” Swan continued, “she discovered spells and summonings which had been unused since the dark days before the coming of Mir. She used these, and with one such spell was able to draw into herself more magic energy than any K’Ur’Mir before her. And used this spell and this magical energy to transport herself to another realm.”

“Like you did,” Garrison said soberly.

Swan nodded, closing her eyes, continuing. “I used the spell to save my life, to keep from being consumed by the Mist of Oblivion. My mother used it in the quest for more magical power. Evidently,” Swan told him, looking at Garrison again, “she found it. When she returned, Erg’Ran recounted to me, her power had increased manyfold. She learned to transmute living things from one to another. I know how, but have never done it. I learned it from her without her knowing it.”

“What do you mean when you say she could transmute living things?”

Swan drew a deep breath, exhaled, saying, “Do you remember the difference in types of magic, Al’An? For example, when I used a very little bit of magical energy to heal the wounds Gar’Ath sustained in the wood, all that I did was to accelerate a natural process. To transmute is wholly unnatural. The horse which my mother, the Queen Sorceress, rides? Mul’Din? Mul’Din is a man’s name. There is good reason for that. The horse was once a man, her lover. Every horse that she has ever ridden since I was a child was once a man. They retain a man’s mind and emotions, but no power of speech. After she has run them into the ground, or tired of them, they are gelded and left for age and madness to destroy.”

“Holy shit,” Garrison murmured.

“Is this a special kind of g’urg?”

Alan Garrison rose to his knees, swept Swan into his arms and kissed her harder than he had ever kissed anyone, the sweetness of tasting her beyond anything he could have imagined. In the stillness of the falling snow, he could hear Swan’s heart beating.

Virtually every officer of the Horde was assembled in the Great Hall of Barad’Il’Koth, crowded shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the narrow aisle within which Eran walked. General, captain, lieutenant alike, each man bowed deeply as she approached, not daring to raise head or eyes until she had passed. The smell of fresh leather, of the copper metal which trimmed a jerkin here, a sword scabbard there, the very scent of their male bodies, all blended in an intoxicatingly heady mixture. Eran, Sorceress Queen, Mistress General, inhaled it, tasted it, consumed the adulation as deeply as her body would hold.

Eran ascended to the dais on which her throne was set. Great torches burst into flame on either side of her as she moved past them, lighting in series, their fires rising at the slightest beckoning of her mind. Arrayed prostrate along the low steps, the sleeves of their robes arranged to carpet the stone beneath her feet, were the Handmaidens of Koth. Their voices chanted of her power. A tossed glance over her shoulder toward the long train of her heavily brocaded gown and the hands which bore it made everything perfect.

Moc’Dar, once strongest of the strong, carried her train as a woman would.

The onetime great captain of the Sword of Koth was heavily shackled about the neck and wrists and ankles, attired in a shift of sacking cloth and a short, hooded cloak. And he was no longer the man he once was. Although her magical energy was still depleted from managing the Mist of Oblivion, what remained had been more than adequate to alter Moc’Dar.

The rather ruggedly handsome face which she’d seen so rarely because it was covered by his black mask when he was uniformed was attractive no longer. In its place was a mask that he would wear forever. She had left his features recognizable, merely turned his skin into layers of scales, red and orange and green and black, with no pattern to them, the sight of them sickening. The effect was so disgusting, she transformed all the skin which covered his body to match. Where once a flowing mane of black hair had crowned his head, jellied lumps of flesh floated, their shapes altering as he moved. His once broad shoulders were diminished to sloping blobs of quivering skin. His legs were twisted and bent, his feet as well. His walk was torturous to watch, and she hoped even more so to endure.

And the obvious symbol of his manhood was gone from between his legs. Eran had altered his demeanor, as well. No longer was he the courageous warrior, fearing no man. He now feared everyone, everything, shivering in terror at the slightest glance, cowering even from his own image.

Moc’Dar’s punishment was delicious, and obvious to all who might be tempted to transgress or shirk.

Eran reached the height of the dais, standing before her throne, glancing down, watching as Moc’Dar, crawling about on hands and knees, fumbled her train. “Cover yourself and be still, Moc’Dar!” He obeyed instantly, or tried to. The moment that she had finished his transformation, then created for him what he wore, she had taught him—with the lash—how to comport himself. Moc’Dar had learned well. He was curled up into a ball near her feet, struggling to mask every part of his body beneath a too-short cloak and enormous hood. To do so, he had to draw his knees up to his chest, fold his arms tightly about him, bend his neck and back to an all but impossible degree. And, of course, he was in a constant state of terror, terror that he would displease her. On the contrary, he pleased her greatly this way.

Eran looked up, surveying the sea of frightened manly faces as she addressed her assembled officer corps. “Behold the great Captain Moc’Dar, his very name striking fear in the hearts of all who opposed him! Behold the officer who failed to obey me, who ran in cowardice. Behold what will happen to each or all of you should I be disobeyed or betrayed or merely feel the whim to see you forever undone! In pleasing my slightest wish is your only hope!”