The Golden Shield of IBF (16 page)

Garrison’s meager mastery of equestrian-related parlance was easily strained, but if memory served he thought that the gait at which their horses moved over the plateau would best be described as a canter. It was somewhere between a slow lope and a fast gallop.

So far, nothing had arisen out of the ordinary and they were making good time. His horse, fresh from several hours of rest, seemed eager still and straining to run. “Easy, girl,” Garrison murmured to her.

Moc’Dar cowered beneath the chart table, near the Queen’s feet, feebly attempting once again to hide his disgusting body beneath his meager cloak, just as she had decreed him to do. He was amusing, but Eran felt that she would soon tire of him this way, perhaps spellchange him to something even more repulsive, more torturous for him to endure.

But there was no time for that now.

Eran focused her attention, instead, on the maps spread before her. The Horde was scattered to the six winds, searching for Swan and her vile companions.

The snows had changed everything, and very rapidly. Had her attentions not been elsewhere, or had she anticipated that her daughter’s magic would be strong enough to escape the Mist of Oblivion, she could have altered the weather, prevented the snows from blocking the mountain passes giving access to the sea.

The sea, Woroc’Il’Lod, was beyond doubt her daughter’s destination, the route by which her daughter would come to Edge Land and Barad’Il’Koth.

With the passes heavily snow covered, Swan would have no choice but to cross Arba’Il’Tac. Eran focused her second-sight as she stared at the map. She’d have to be quick, because her daughter’s magical abilities might have reached a level where the girl could feel that she was being second-sighted.

Eran concentrated, saw them, many men with horses, one of the men at the center of the column garbed as Sword of Koth; but he was a prisoner. The riders made good speed across the plateau, at the head of them the oldest of her enemies, Erg’Ran—curse him! Riding in his wake, Eran saw her daughter. Riding beside Swan, there was a man. His face was hidden deep within the cowl of a hood and she could not see it. But, that this man was the one, the one whom Swan brought back with her from the other realm, Eran was certain.

It was certain, too, that Swan could not have him; each instant that Swan and he were together was incredibly dangerous.

Eran’s own magic not yet fully restored from controlling the Mist of Oblivion, she had not the power to magically transport an army of any adequate size to the plateau, nor could she create some great cataclysm which would rent the plateau and destroy the riders coursing Arba’Il’Tac.

Once they crossed Arba’Il’Tac, they would go to the old summer palace, and because of Eran’s own spellworking, Eran could not harm them there, nor could the Horde of Koth molest them.

Eran blinked and the second-sight vision was gone. “Think!” Eran urged herself, screaming the admonition. She heard Moc’Dar groveling beneath the chart table, thinking perhaps that her wrath was directed against him rather than herself.

There were so many spells to keep in work that, if she used too much magical energy before she were fully restored, some of the crucial spells which she maintained might become broken. Except the one that she wished that she could break. Eran controlled it not.

Eran had forced the renewal twice already since learning of Swan’s survival. Time was her enemy, time having to elapse before she could take the renewal unto herself again, and time that Swan and her man from the other realm would be together.

“Think!” Eran shrieked again. Moc’Dar whimpered little frightened animal sounds from the flagstones near her feet.

“Animals,” Eran murmured. “Moc’Dar, you still aid me!” Eran gathered her skirts and raced across the chamber, toward the shelves where she kept her books and scrolls, only faintly aware of the sounds of Moc’Dar scurrying along at her heels.

Eran second-sighted the shelves, skimming over each item there, at last locating what she sought.

Raising her skirts still higher, Eran stepped up onto the three-legged stool which allowed her to reach the upper shelves, her fingers reaching unerringly to the one scroll she required. Stepping down, Eran dropped to her knees on the flagstones, skirts billowing around her. Unrolling the scroll, her eyes flickered down over the Old Tongue runes. “Yes,” Eran purred, smiling.

Erg’Ran called in the outriders, dispatching two other riders to take up sentry positions while the company stopped so that the horses could be rested. The portion of the plateau which they chose was no different than any other, topographically identical to what lay behind and what lay ahead. It would have been terribly easy to become lost here, to wander the same ground over and over again unendingly. With the enormity of the sky and the vast expanse of Arba’Il’Tac seeming to continue infinitely in all directions, the mere act of standing still was dizzyingly disorienting.

Garrison focused on his horse, rubbing down his own mount, telling Swan, “I’ll take care of yours in just a minute.”

But Swan was already seeing to her animal and told him so. “Al’An. I am perfectly capable of caring for my mount all by myself. Before the Mist devoured my home, after all, I alone cared for my wonderful white horse.”

“Not magically?”

“She was a fine and wonderful creature, my white horse, and she liked to be touched. The magic cannot do that, Al’An.”

He started to speak, but said nothing. In perfect silence, Garrison and Swan stood almost back to back, tending their horses.

Gar’Ath was changing his saddle to a fresh mount. His animal and Bin’Ah’s were getting the greatest workouts. “Enchantress, a question if I may?”

“Of course,” Swan replied.

“I know that the Champion speaks always of food, but I’ll confess that I’m more than a bit hungry myself. At the old summer palace, what will we eat?”

Garrison chuckled under his breath. It was the classic male to female question: “What’s for dinner?”

“Well, what would you like, Gar’Ath?”

“Meat and fowl—we’ll have plenty of fish to choose from when we take ship on Woroc’Il’Lod—and breads and vegetables and—”

Swan laughed, telling him, “I will produce whatever you and the other men wish, but it will be unprepared. The taste is better when food is cooked rather than magic worked. Do you agree?”

“Nothing like home cooking, Enchantress!”

Garrison laughed again.

Swan continued, saying, “The other women and I will see to it that the finest meal ever eaten is prepared, just the way you and Al’An and Erg’Ran and all the others would like it. There will be such abundance that you, Gar’Ath, will be too exhausted from lifting a spoon or knife to lift your sword, too full, too uncaring to raise yourself into your saddle, even if the most beautiful girl of Creath beckoned to you!”

Gar’Ath tightened his cinch and swung up into the saddle, winking as he told Swan, “I doubt, Enchantress, that I could ever be that satisfied by food alone.” He glanced at Garrison, nodding as he said, “Champion,” then heeled his horse’s flanks and was off.

“So, you actually cook?”

“If I eat because I must eat, the magic will do. If I eat because I truly wish to eat for the taste, then I cook.”

Garrison understood the difference better than Swan probably supposed, he guessed. He supposed the magic kind of cooking was like heating something up in a microwave, the good kind of cooking like the good kind of cooking anywhere, slow and patient.

Swan was finished with her horse, started to come over to stand beside him when she stopped, said, “Here is what I meant when we spoke about Arba’Il’Tac, Al’An. Look!”

She drew off her left glove, flicked her wrist, closed, then opened the palm of her hand and, from within her hand, the same light that had guided them toward the boundary with the wood now shone, bluish white. Swan passed the light over the rock near their feet. Garrison blinked, then realized what it was that she was illuminating for him.

Etched in the stone like lines finely drawn by an exacting artist was the outline of a fully articulated bird wing, only vastly larger than any which Garrison had ever seen. From root to tip, as his eyes followed the light, it seemed to extend thirty feet or better in length. “Holy—”

“Shit?”

“Yes, holy shit,” Garrison agreed. “What do you call this thing, the creature that left these markings in the stone?”

“They bear no names of which I am aware. Here! Here is part of another one, Al’An.”

Garrison’s eyes followed the light, Swan casting it over the outline of a gargantuan spinal column. Its width at the narrowest part appeared to be almost six inches, appreciably wider where the vertebrae emerged. The light from Swan’s hand wasn’t strong enough to reveal where the skeletal outline ended or began. He was about ask if she could increase the light’s intensity—go to high beam—when Swan’s light went out. “Mother has found us,” she whispered, her voice trembling when she spoke.

“Erg’Ran!” Garrison called out, letting his cloak fall open, to grasp the butt of one of his pistols, ready to draw. The old man came toward them in a limping run. Garrison’s left arm curled around Swan’s shoulders, drawing her close against him, to shield her. “What do you see, Swan?”

“What is it, Enchantress? Tell us if you can,” Erg’Ran urged.

“I have never felt a spellworking like this. I thought that—that I felt my mother second-sighting us before, before we dismounted, but I was uncertain.”

“Then, she’s second-sighting us?” Erg’Ran prodded.

“More than that, different than that.” Garrison felt Swan’s body shudder against him, the paroxysm rolling through her like a wave, as if a seizure. Her knees seemed to buckle and Garrison held her more tightly. Swan’s voice was soft, low, fighting for control, but building in intensity. “I feel my mother’s power rising from the rock beneath us, coming. Coming for us!” Swan finally shrieked. “What magic is this?”

In the next instant, they all knew.

The rock beneath their feet began to tremble, tiny fissures spiderwebbing along the length and breadth of Arba’Il’Tac. “Earthquake!” Garrison called out over the cracking and smashing of the rock. Would they understand the word?

“It is not what you say, Al’An!” Swan shouted back to him. “It is far worse. Look!”

Garrison looked at Swan, then turned to gaze toward whatever it was which her eyes seemed to be riveted upon. As Garrison saw what she saw, one part of his brain began telling another part of his brain that this was impossible, and then ordering his mind to reject what was clearly recognizable as immediate, impending doom. He was seized with the idea that he should be laughing, his mind death-gripped onto the thought that this would be the perfect time for him to verbalize a reference to that very special kind of shit which Swan always asked him about. Somewhere, somehow, it crossed Garrison’s mind that he was crazy just to be seeing this, wildly, egregiously funny farm nuts.

Rising from the plateau, nearly transparent but of obvious substance, like photographic negatives, but alive, rose the monsters which had perished here within the rock of Arba’Il’Tac millennia ago, animated in all their horrific glory and power.

The creatures snarled, they snapped at each other, they reeled with life. They discovered prey, waiting to be devoured, consumed into stomachs which no longer had flesh and substance.

Garrison started laughing, laughing so hard that tears rolled from his eyes and down his cheeks. But he grabbed Swan closer to him still, half lifting her off her feet, spinning around. Letting go of her for an instant, Garrison snugged tight the cinch strap of her saddle. He swept Swan up into his arms, the horse already going wild-eyed with terror. One fist locked on the animal’s bridle. The laughter gone, the tears still filling his eyes, Garrison commanded girl and horse, “Ride! That way! Now!” Garrison smacked Swan’s horse across the rump and the animal leaped away. Alan Garrison didn’t know what direction “that way” was, but none of the nightmare beasts were in that direction—yet.

Erg’Ran was shouting orders.

Garrison snugged the cinch for his own saddle, vaulting up, wrenching the animal around bodily by its reins, then digging in his heels, his feet not yet in the stirrups.

Swan’s mount was already a hundred yards ahead of him. Garrison found the stirrups and leaned low over his horse’s neck, its mane lashing so mercilessly against his face that the tears began anew. He glanced back. “Mistake, lamebrain!” Garrison chided himself. Everywhere he looked, more of the beasts were rising from the rock, towering into the night sky, slobber dripping from enormous fanged jaws. These things didn’t just look alive, Garrison realized; they were alive. “That’s good,” he tried convincing himself, talking to himself again. “If they aren’t alive, you can’t kill ’em!”

The test of that theory was upon him Garrison realized with his next breath. There was either a shadow obscuring both moons, or—

It was the thing with the thirty-foot-long wing. With both wings spread wide to swoop down upon him and a body the length and girth of a Cadillac in between them, airborne it spanned more than seventy feet. The head, blunt faced and at least a yard wide, terminated in jaws which nearly obscured the rest of the skull. Set within the jaws were row after row of pointed, shark-like teeth, each as large as Garrison’s hand.

Garrison knotted his left fist into the reins and his animal’s mane. He drew one of the SIG .45s from its shoulder holster. “230-grain Hydra-Shok don’t fail me now!” His target was so big, Garrison rationalized, that it would be impossible to miss, even from the wildly careening back of a moving horse.

Garrison fired. He fired again.

A clammy feeling like nausea rose from the depths of Alan Garrison’s stomach, swept over him, but he knew that it was fear. He couldn’t have missed the creature, but there was no effect on this thing which was about to snatch him up into its jaws and kill him.

In high school, Alan Garrison had a friend named Morry, who, like Garrison, had always wanted to be a writer, taught himself to type at age ten, wrote novella-length short stories for English class assignments. Morry even had a continuing character whom he wrote about, a secret agent. Once, Morry had his fictional creation trapped inside a burning building, clinging from one arm to a cable in an elevator shaft filling with smoke, a lusciously beautiful girl unconscious in the other. The last time that Alan Garrison saw Morry, Morry still hadn’t figured out how to get the secret agent out of the elevator shaft.