The Golden Shield of IBF (14 page)

Garrison stood about twenty-five yards away, remembering to breathe.

Gar’Ath turned toward Garrison, doubling over as he howled with laughter.

“What’s so funny, Gar’Ath?”

“You pretending to know nothing of how to kill the Ra’U’Ba! And then using the classic method spoken of in the writings of Mir himself! Confess! There are Ra’U’Ba where you come from, Champion! Are there not? And you’ve slain more than your share of them, I’d wager! Am I right?”

“No Ra’U’Ba where I come from, or writings of Mir, either, Gar’Ath. Only dumb luck.”

Garrison’s shoulder slumped a little. Hungry, cold, tired, he started back across the snow to go get his other knife. Gar’Ath was still laughing. Garrison couldn’t have laughed at anything. He had this image in his mind of how disgusting it was going to be cleaning the Ra’U’Ba glop out of two automatic knives.

Chapter Six

A half-dozen fighters from the Company of Mir trickled down from positions of concealment along the canyon rim, calling to Gar’Ath, waving to him in greeting. Within a matter of minutes after they reached the canyon floor behind the Falls of Mir (and after Garrison’s quick introduction as “Champion”), Gar’Ath dispatched them on various duties. One of them—using a mount that the fallen Ra’U’Ba would no longer need—was commissioned to ride back for Swan, Erg’Ran and the others. Gar’Ath sent out a man to get Gar’Ath’s horse and Garrison’s. The others Gar’Ath assigned to various sentry posts, lest more of the Ra’U’Ba or any other enemy should be near.

Everything attended to, Gar’Ath laid down the enormous sword he’d snatched up from one of the Ra’U’Ba, then proceeded to retrieve his own sword. Extracting it from the brain hole in the skull of the Ra’U’Ba looked for all the world—to Garrison, at least—like a long-haired young Arthur drawing the sword Excalibur from the stone. The scene was so reminiscent of this that Garrison called across the canyon floor to Gar’Ath, “You are rightwise King of England!”

Gar’Ath turned his head and called back to Garrison. “What was that which you called me?”

“King of England.” And Garrison started to explain what England was, the word coming out in his own tongue, despite Swan’s spell, because there was no equivalent to it in the language of Creath. But, the word “King” was in English, too. “England is a place, where years ago, in our legends, perhaps in fact, a young man rose to lead his people toward a dream. And a king, of course, is the male counterpart of a queen.”

“Your home must be very strange, Champion, strange indeed, to have such a thing.”

Garrison was wrenching his other knife from the shoulder and neck of the Ra’U’Ba. Gar’Ath, dagger in one hand, sword in the other, both dripping blood and yellow brain matter, approached. “Let me get this straight, Gar’Ath. There’s no concept of a male ruler here?”

“Warrior leaders are mostly men, Champion, although there have been a few women who’ve distinguished themselves greatly in battle. You really know nothing of Creath beyond what you have learned since your arrival, or what the Enchantress might have recounted before you returned with her, do you?”

“Not a thing,” Garrison admitted.

“Let’s see to our steel, and while we do, perhaps I can provide—”

“Bring me up to speed?”

“If you say, Champion. I can do that.”

It would be nearly an hour before Swan and the others reached the canyon behind the Falls, the way Garrison figured it. Picking up on some of the local lore while he cleaned his knives might keep his mind off the fact that he’d just taken another life, and that killing wasn’t really bothering him as he thought that it should be.

“Where to start, now,” Gar’Ath mused aloud.

“I know the perfect place,” Garrison supplied. “Who was this Mir that I’m always hearing about?”

“Ahh, you can’t go starting with Mir, Champion. It’s before that, the land of place that Creath was before the coming of Mir. That’s the only way to be understanding then or now.”

Garrison took out one of his cigarettes, offered one to Gar’Ath. The swordsman declined. Garrison lit up the old-fashioned way, which involved a cigarette lighter instead of magic.

“Magic is a way of life here, even if you don’t practice magic. I don’t. But the magic is all around me. The Enchantress healed my wounds with magic. When I was being born, so they tell me, I was turned around the wrong way in my mother’s womb. My mother was no user of magic, never had the way of it. My father was a swordmaker, so he knew a little magic, but not what would be needed. There was still something of a civilization left in those days, before the Horde had destroyed everything. In the village, there was a woman who was a midwife, and she was attending my mother. She knew enough magic to make most pain go away, to cure warts, things like that, but not to turn a child in the womb.

“There was a K’Ur’Mir family—” Gar’Ath continued, Garrison interrupting him.

“I’ve heard that term, Gar’Ath. What does it mean? The royal blood? Nobility?”

“The nobility, as you say. They fled one of the larger towns when the Horde came killing and destroying. Every K’Ur’Mir has the ability with magical energy. My father had made a sword for their son, who was named Gar’Ath. I was named after him, because of what his mother did. When my father told them that I had to be turned and the midwife didn’t have the magic, Gar’Ath’s mother came and turned me with her magic, then eased the birth for my mother. If I’d been born a girl, they would have named me after the woman who saved my mother and me. As it was, they named me after her son. He died less than a full cycle of the seasons later, his father and mother, too, when the Horde swept through our village. She used her magic to hold them off as long as she could, but her magic was nothing compared to the magic of the Queen Sorceress.

“But,” Gar’Ath continued, “her courage, and the courage of her husband and son and village men like my father made it so that almost a hundred lives were saved. In the end, the two best swordsmen from the village—my father one of them, of course—were chosen to lead those who could be saved to safety. The village was already in flames. The Queen Sorceress sent an ice dragon to take care of that.”

“An ice dragon,” Garrison repeated aloud.

Gar’Ath looked at Garrison oddly. “They slept within the ice since before anyone can know, and she freed them to serve her.”

“Oh. Those ice dragons.” Now that he thought of it, he remembered Swan mentioning something about an ice dragon’s poison bladder or whatever.

“Ra’U’Ba roamed the roads, killing, finding persons to be tortured and made to reveal where there were hiding places, where other survivors could be found. The beasts within the deep wood were summoned by the Queen Sorceress, commanded by her magic to go into the villages and devour the dead and the dying.

“Those of us from our village who survived were able to hide in the mountains, occasionally establish long-term camps. Some went on to other villages, and died when the Horde swept through. I grew up, learning to read and make runes, cipher numbers, survive in the wild, fight. My father taught me everything he knew of the blade. This sword, which I made, is a copy of the one that he left in the belly of the ice dragon that swooped down from the skies to burn our village.”

“And all of this, I gather, was brought about because of the will of Swan’s mother,” Garrison said. He’d nursed the cigarette as long as he could, put it out and looked about to find something with which to clean the blood and gore from his knives. He followed Gar’Ath’s lead and cut a large swatch from the nearest dead Ra’U’Ba’s skirt. He promised himself that he’d wash his hands afterward.

Gar’Ath continued his story. “I told you about the destruction of my village so that you would understand, Champion, how it was before the coming of Mir. What the Queen Sorceress did was destroy all that had been built in the generations since Mir’s coming, returning Creath to the blood-soaked land that it once was.”

His sword and dagger clean, Gar’Ath took a vial of oil and various sharpening stones from a pouch hung on his belt. “Before the coming of Mir, the dark magic ruled Creath. You asked why we have no men who would rule as a queen rules. I’d never questioned the way of things before you asked me, but the answer is obvious. Magic. Men can be taught to perform specific magical processes, can teach these skills to other men. But only a woman can create magic, can take a spell beyond this to that and back again. The magic comes from within them.”

Alan Garrison had always liked the word “epiphany.” It rarely saw any use, however. But the point which Gar’Ath had just made brought Garrison to an epiphany—he understood Creath at last. “That’s why there’s so little technology in a society that must be thousands and thousands of years old, Gar’Ath, why everything sort of stopped! And why women run the whole thing!”

“What do you mean, Champion?”

“Where I come from, when we wanted to travel faster, we built sleeker ships that were better rigged, trains that ran with steam, then diesel power, and planes to fly in the air and take us from one point to another at greater speeds than were possible on the land. All you guys did was work up a new magical spell or summoning or whatever. Who needs an airplane if you can travel from one place to another with magic? And you don’t even need to worry about luggage. Just make new clothes with more magic once you arrive! Magic took all the initiative out of any quest for technology here. And since women are the ones with the real magic, they run the show!” Garrison glanced at Gar’Ath’s sword. “As far as craftsmanship goes, something like your sword is a real high point here, right?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t get me wrong now, Gar’Ath. Your sword is magnificent. But have you ever tried making wheels with little teeth on them? They’re called gears. With your metal working skills, you could build machines.”

Gar’Ath smiled. “You’ve seen an instrument like the one by means of which the Enchantress counted the passage of time?”

“She made a clock?”

“As you say, but the time-telling device was inside her castle, which is no more.”

“How’d she get the idea to make it?” Garrison queried Gar’Ath.

Gar’Ath reflected for a moment, then responded, “She spoke once of reading about the device in an old book or scroll.”

Garrison took off his wristwatch and passed it over to Gar’Ath. “This is such a device, Gar’Ath. These are common in my world. This one is an old-style, which uses weights and gears. We have time-telling devices which are totally different, more technologically advanced.”

“It’s very small compared to the one built by the Enchantress.” Gar’Ath put it beside his ear. “And the noise it makes is much less.”

“A clock! She built a damn clock! And someone else built one before her! Do you realize what all of that means?” Garrison felt like shouting it from the canyon rim. He didn’t wait for Gar’Ath to reply. “Swan is reintroducing technology to Creath without even knowing it!”

Gar’Ath returned Garrison’s watch. “Is this a good thing?”

“It could be, really could be, yes. With the magic and the technology, you guys could be—”

“What could we be, Champion?”

Alan Garrison sat down again on the rock he’d been warming. “Anything you wanted, Gar’Ath. Creath could be anything that anyone here ever wanted it to be, a paradise.”

“I don’t know that last word that you said, Champion.”

Alan Garrison nodded his head soberly, saying, “I didn’t think that you would, Gar’Ath.”

Alan Garrison still had to learn about this Mir and what Mir did and why. More importantly, he had to discover why Swan’s mother was obsessed with undoing all that Mir had done, was committed to perpetuating a dark age of evil magic and death for Creath. One way or the other, the secret to understanding what motivated Swan’s mother would only be found beyond the ice sea Woroc’Il’Lod, in Edge Land at evil’s stronghold, Barad’Il’Koth. ...

“You’ll learn to sleep in the saddle when you must, Champion,” Erg’Ran volunteered, glancing over at the newcomer as he swayed a little bit atop his mount.

“I could fall asleep in a heartbeat. Trust me. Trouble is, I’d fall off the horse.”

Erg’Ran laughed, saying, “That is how you learn, Champion!”

Erg’Ran urged his mount forward, coming up beside Gar’Ath. “We can rest when we reach the old summer palace, lad. You look as tired as the Champion.”

“I am that, old friend,” Gar’Ath confided.

“He acquitted himself well, I understand, our Enchantress’s Champion did.”

Gar’Ath turned a little bit in his saddle. “He fought bravely, Erg’Ran. He has a good intuitive ability for battle, just not very much practice. All the practice in the world won’t make up for a lack of that ability. The Champion’s a good man, but he has very strange ideas and comes from a very strange place.”

“In the old days,” Erg’Ran told Gar’Ath, “you would have met a great many people with a great many ideas, Gar’Ath, in the old days before life was a day-to-day battle against the Queen Sorceress. Perhaps, someday, there will be time for strange ideas once again. Perhaps you’ll live to see it. We’ll see.”

The trail, such as it was, wound steeply upward, toward the plateau of Arba’Il’Tac, where some said that all life on Creath once began, long before the coming of Mir or the dark magic before that, before anything. It was, some philosophers believed, the place where time began.

Erg’Ran was less worried over philosophy than tactics. Arba’Il’Tac was all but barren. The plateau sloped gradually downward, stretching on for lancethrow after lancethrow, before at last touching the cliffs which overlooked the icy waters of Woroc’Il’Lod. If the forces of the Queen Sorceress should catch them in the open on the plateau, there would be nowhere to hide, no position from which to fight. It would, almost certainly, be a massacre.

There was no alternative, however, to openly crossing Arba’Il’Tac. The snows in the mountain passes through which he had dispatched the Company of Mir toward the sea had piled too deep in the intervening day. If the Enchantress were to use her magic to clear a path through the snow, the results—avalanche, ice floe—might prove catastrophic. To use the broad track around the mountains, which led directly to the sea, would be tantamount to suicide. That track was the main turnpike to Woroc’Il’Lod, traveled regularly by the Horde, continuing on to eventually come to Edge Land and Barad’Il’Koth itself.