The Golden Shield of IBF (31 page)

“My father’s body borne on a litter, we made our way to the encampment near the monolith. We traveled in sufficient force to risk the wood once again, and we traversed it unmolested by the tree demons.

“My heart was heavier than I thought then that it could ever be. But, upon reaching the encampment, I learned my mother’s fate. What could be done was done for the guards. Enraged beyond enduring, with my father’s sword I set out to find Eran. I have no idea if I would have killed her. As it was, I did not see her again until after you were born, Enchantress. I kept the sword for the day that I would avenge my mother.

“Eran established herself with the witches, became their leader. Not long before your birth, Enchantress, she at last obtained the ultimate power which she had so long sought. It is then that she began the destruction of the K’Ur’Mir in earnest. Yet already Creath was in the grip of violence and evil unlike anything known since before the coming of Mir. Eran was determined to make Creath still worse. And she has done so.

“Eran, whose curiosity was boundless, destroyed the person that once she was and nearly all of Creath as well. As you move against her, Enchantress, you must guard against the temptation which will present itself. You must use what magic needs be used in order to defeat Eran, then eschew its use, if you are strong enough. Eran has magic that no mortal or immortal was ever meant to know. In order to defeat Eran, you must learn this dark magic and then use it for purposes other than for which it was divined. Afterward, such magic must return to the darkness from whence it came.

“If you defeat Eran,” Erg’Ran warned, “your greatest enemy will be yourself, Enchantress. Never forget that.”

“Three questions, please,” Alan Garrison requested.

“The first question, Champion?”

“The sword, your father’s sword. You have it with you?”

“Yes. I hope to use it to take the life from Eran. While she lives, she will always be dangerous. But the important thing is not that I take her life, but that someone does.”

“The tablets she translated. Where are they now?”

“Eran would have them closely guarded, at Barad’Il’Koth, Champion.”

“Which leads to what is my third and presumably last question, Erg’Ran.”

“It is?”

“How would Swan avail herself of the same magical abilities her mother has, which you say that she must learn if we’re to win?”

Reading the older man’s face in the light of the blue-white magical globe, Erg’Ran seemed to carefully weigh his answer. Finally, he spoke. “The magic grows within the Enchantress. When she controlled the wind, this was something which she could not have done as she did only a short while ago. Her magic grows and strengthens and it will be enough for now. When the time comes, all will learn the source of the Queen Sorceress’s powers, and my niece will know what to do. You will help her, Champion.”

“So, I unintentionally lied, Erg’Ran. Another question, sir.”

“And?”

“How will I know how to help Swan if I don’t know what I’m supposed to do?”

“I was certain from the first, really. You will know what to do because the answer which you seek is already inside you, Champion. Circumstance will cause you to know it. I can tell neither of you anymore. Should I do so, our mission would be lost. You both must trust to me in this,” Erg’Ran concluded.

Swan rested her head against Alan Garrison’s chest. Garrison took another cigarette. When he felt the pack as he returned it to his jacket pocket, it was already full again.

Chapter Twelve

The second-sight revealed that Swan, Erg’Ran and the Champion had set sail again with their pitiful band, this time crossing Woroc’Il’Lod on a wind of Swan’s making. Swan was getting very good, and Eran could not help but wonder if her daughter knew the secret—yet.

Eran, skirts caught up in her clenched fist, stormed along the passageway toward its end. Her magic was so depleted from maintaining the cyclonic wave that she had to concentrate in order to make the chamber door open to her will.

She stepped inside, kicking the door closed with her heel.

“Things aren’t going well?”

“Little do you care!”

“How old am I, Eran?”

“Such reckoning is meaningless, as is conversation between us. Will you submit willingly?”

“No.”

Anger always increased her magical abilities, at least for an eyeblink or two. She willed herself naked and her clothes disappeared from her body. Walking across the room, Eran stopped in front of the glass, stared at herself. Her body was as firm now as it had been then. “How do you control yourself so?”

“With considerable effort, Eran, if that soothes your ego any. You’re as beautiful as the day that I met you.”

“Why, then?”

“My conscience. I have to refuse to help you, because you’re a rotten, evil—”

“Silence!” His mouth still moved, but he made no sound. When he realized that, he stopped moving his mouth, only stared at her—but not at her body. He stared at her eyes.

Eran had set a number of spellcastings on him at the same time when she’d made the shackles appear on his wrists and ankles. Like the steel encircling his limbs, the spells were to control him.

“Would pain interest you?” She smiled. He collapsed to the flagstones in the next eyeblink. His mouth opened again in a mute scream, his hands grasping his abdomen, then his head, then his chest. “I got your attention, didn’t I?”

Eran walked toward him. He writhed in pain at her feet. That was normally a pleasant sensation for her, watching a male suffer so. Under the present circumstances, it was a waste of her time. “I can leave you like this, or worse! Kiss my foot and the pain will stop.”

Her foot was very near to his face. He would only have to move his head ever so slightly to obey. He did not.

“I can make you!” He knew that. And still he made no attempt to accede to her demand.

She had tried blinding and deafening him, left him that way when she went off on a campaign with the Sword of Koth. Periodically, she crippled him with unbearable pain. She had caused him to be gnawed upon by terrifying creatures throughout an entire night. Always, she healed him. Always, he continued to defy her. Eran willed his pain to cease, and his speech to be restored.

He rose to his knees, and for a brief moment she thought that he might be about to relent. When he spoke, he said, “I wish that you’d kill me, Eran.”

“Never. Never that.”

Eran made her clothes reappear to cover her body, made the door open. She walked out and she left him there on his knees.

He knelt not in obeisance to her will, but in total exhaustion.

He had defeated her and she had helped him.

“‘Déjὰ vu’ means that something one sees or experiences seems to be something from before, happening all over again. It’s a term in French, a language of Earth. My world has many principal languages, unlike Creath. Seems to me that the only major languages here are yours and theirs.” Garrison jerked a thumb across the stern rail and toward the horizon, where a Gle’Ur’Gya vessel, identical to the one destroyed in the cyclonic wave, had just appeared.

“With the wind at my command,” Swan told him, “we can outdistance them easily, despite their superior craft. But I would still like to secure them as allies against my mother.”

“You’re an interesting girl,” Garrison told Swan truthfully. “It was a Gle’Ur’Gya who killed your grandfather, yet you don’t seem to hold that against the Gle’Ur’Gya now that you know.”

“I wish to do what is best for the people of Creath, Al’An. That includes the Gle’Ur’Gya, whether they appreciate my intentions or not, whether they like it or not. As Erg’Ran told us, it was the Gle’Ur’Gya chieftain himself who killed the one of his own who murdered my grandfather. My grandfather’s death is past.”

“You’ll make a fine ruler here,” Garrison declared.

“That is not my intention, Al’An. I wish for the people of Creath to learn to rule themselves. The Company of Mir can teach those who survive, teach them how.

“Now, what do you think that we should do, Al’An? Should we outrun the Gle’Ur’Gya, or should we try to speak with them?”

Garrison looked away from Swan and over the stern rail, the comparatively huge Gle’Ur’Gya vessel gaining on them ever so slightly. Swan would only have to summon up a few more knots of windspeed and the Gle’Ur’Gya would be left further and further behind, never overtaking them.

“Could you get me over to their ship? And set me up with a language spell so that we’d all be able to understand one another?”

“I can make it so that their tongue is intelligible to you, and yours to them. Understanding is another question entirely, isn’t it?” Swan smiled. “Do you want to appear on their deck? Poof?”

“Touché. That’s French, too. Yeah, let’s go for poof.”

“But not alone, Al’An. Gar’Ath and Mitan can accompany you. They are both fine warriors and Mitan has considerable magic, in the event that things go badly.”

Garrison nodded his agreement, but said, “I just don’t want this looking like a raiding party. I want the chance to talk before they react.”

“I can fix that, too. Join me in a little while?” Swan smiled at him over her shoulder. She was already walking toward the bow.

What Garrison judged as about ten minutes had passed, most probably time enough for whatever Swan was doing in order to facilitate the planned talks with the Gle’Ur’Gya. Gar’Ath, whom Garrison had briefed concerning their intentions, had nonetheless undertaken to raise the armada’s condition of readiness to what amounted to battle stations, just in case.

“It should be time, Gar’Ath,” Garrison informed him.

Gar’Ath nodded agreement, made a remark to Bin’Ah, then snatched up his shield and fell in beside Garrison. Together, they made their way forward, toward the bow pulpit.

Garrison felt slightly ridiculous, carrying the golden shield which Swan had made for him out of his badge and an axe slung at his waist. But if trouble did occur, it would not be wise to let the Gle’Ur’Gya see his pistols in action unless absolutely necessary. His “firespitters” would be better held back as the high-tech secret weapon.

Garrison happened to be looking at Gar’Ath when the ordinarily brash young swordsman’s jaw dropped and his eyes glazed. Garrison stared at Gar’Ath for another moment or so before looking at whatever Gar’Ath was staring at. When he saw Mitan, he understood Gar’Ath’s reaction immediately. Mitan, usually leather clad and striking in her warrior mufti, looked more beautiful than ever in midnight blue satin and white lace. Evidently, Gar’Ath had never seen her dressed any other way but as a warrior. Garrison felt almost sorry for Gar’Ath; what resolve the fellow had been able to maintain against becoming involved with Mitan had visibly just crumbled.

Swan announced, “The Gle’Ur’Gya know enough about our culture to appreciate the fact that those comparatively few women who are warriors do not dress for battle as Mitan is dressed now. Her appearance will place them at ease, if only slightly.”

Mitan’s appearance might place the Gle’Ur’Gya at ease, but it quite obviously had the opposite effect on Gar’Ath; he walked right into Garrison’s shield as if he were unconscious. Mitan looked more properly dressed for a party than a diplomatic mission. Her neckline fetchingly low, the white lace there and at the belled cuffs of her three-quarter-length sleeves contrasted with the healthy glowing tan of her skin. Her dark brown hair was piled atop her head in an infinity of ringlets, a circlet of white flowers peeking out from within them.

“How do I look, Gar’Ath?” Mitan turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, skirt rustling round her ankles, a hint of white lace petticoat beneath.

Garrison shot a glance at Gar’Ath, the swordsman’s face reading like a book again.

Swan broke the spell. “Language will not be a problem. I’ll second-sight their deck from the moment you reach the Gle’Ur’Gya ship until the moment of your return. Erg’Ran will assist me.” Without saying anything, Swan came into Garrison’s arms and kissed him full on the lips, then stepped away. “Are you ready?”

“So we’ll just be here one eyeblink and there the next? Poof?”

“Poof, Al’An.”

“Then, you’ve gotta let me say this one word before we go. Okay?”

“Is it magical?”

“No. You wouldn’t understand because you don’t have TV here, yet. Someday, maybe. I can’t pass it up, saying it.”

“All right. Say the word and then poof.”

Garrison felt a grin spreading over his face. He stood very straight, blew a kiss to Swan and summoned all the drama that he could into his voice. “Energize!”

There were no tinkling sound effect noises. Garrison was on the deck of their little armada’s flagship, then he was on the deck of the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel. There was no in-between.

A voice which rolled like thunder and had the texture usually associated with too much whiskey and too many cigarettes startled Garrison’s mind into reality. “Kill them!”

A half-dozen human-shaped creatures, the least powerfully built of them the size of a pro football nose guard, charged across the deck, swords and axes flashing in the sunlight. Leathery skinned, they had short hair—brown, blond, black—covering all that was visible of their bodies. The flowing hair on their heads and full beards conjoined to form what resembled a lion’s mane.

Mitan interposed herself between the Gle’Ur’Gya and her companions, calling out in the Gle’Ur’Gya’s language, “We come in peace! I am female. Am I dressed as a warrior?” The Gle’Ur’Gya were either stunned by Mitan’s beauty or her talent for stating what had to be obvious even to them. Either way, Garrison realized, she’d halted the Gle’Ur’Gya’s lethal headlong lunge for at least a second.

“We come in peace!” Garrison reiterated. The growing number of Gle’Ur’Gya surrounding them on the main deck narrowed their eyes, studying the three intruders, massive jaws set, their rippling muscles coiled springs. None of the Gle’Ur’Gya spoke. Garrison was tempted to say, “I am sent by the Great White Father in Washington! Harm us and the long knife soldier coats will come with many firesticks!” Garrison passed on that, recalling what happened to George Armstrong Custer. He told them instead, “The Virgin Enchantress, who fights against the Queen Sorceress for the freedom of all the peoples of Creath, has sent us to speak with your leader.” So far, so good, Garrison thought. He said nothing else, waiting instead for one of the Gle’Ur’Gya to say something—anything—that wasn’t an order to kill. Still, no Gle’Ur’Gya spoke.