The Golden Shield of IBF (38 page)

Swan still felt self-conscious about her legs. The stockings revealed every curve and contour of them. She made a long black cloak appear, which she threw over her shoulders. That’s better.” The cloak restored at least a glimmer of decorum and made her look a little bigger in the shoulders (she tried to convince herself). She made the mirror vanish.

She’d used Bre’Gaa’s offered cabin in which to change, and she wandered about it while she waited for the others to arrive. The diversions were already underway, all six ships moving to different positions along the coast of Edge Land.

The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was certainly much more comfortable than the tiny ships to which she was accustomed. That one person aboard the vessel could have living quarters as comparatively capacious as these was fantastic. There was a comfortable looking bed; she’d seen to Al’An s healing while he’d slept in it. There was a chamber pot, a washbasin. She glanced casually at her reflection in a burnished copper plate over the basin. There were cupboards and cabinets. There were books aplenty, and scrolls. The map of Edge Land’s coast was attractively illuminated. The Gle’Ur’Gya weren’t the uncivilized brutes she’d always thought of them being.

Swan had never tried place shifting six living things at once, and she still felt a little nervous about something going wrong. Inside her head, she rehearsed what she must do, but her eyes were wandering over charts and instruments used for plotting courses. The Gle’Ur’Gya were talented seafarers, to be sure. After what was about to transpire, if she lived, she would make it her business to once and for all see to it that there was peace between the Gle’Ur’Gya and her own people.

There was a polite knock at the door. “Please come in,” Swan called out.

Mitan entered, followed by Gar’Ath, Erg’Ran, Captain Bre’Gaa and Al’An, Al’An wearing his sword and carrying his shield, but without a cloak. Before leaving her alone to change, Al’An had asked, “If I gave you a description, do you think you could make me something called a sweater? This greatcape is nice and warm, but I’m not used to moving around in one.”

The “sweater” turned out to be easy enough to magically fabricate for him. Once he described the process—he called it knitting—by which it was made, she had the general idea clearly in mind. Although she hadn’t mentioned her observation to Al’An, she felt that the green sweater went rather poorly with the rest of his clothes (which were blue), not to mention clashing with the leather harness for his firespitters.

Al’An came up to her, kissed her lightly on the lips, and, as he held her, whispered, “You look cute.” It took an eyeblink to comprehend “cute” and, when she did, Swan smiled.

They all assembled at the center of Bre’Gaa’s cabin. “I don’t think that we’ll have any problems,” Swan told them, “but I’d be remiss not to remind all of you that I’ve never performed a place-shifting spell for six people all at once. If I have any reason to believe that there will be any problems, I’ll stop at once and send us out two or three at a time.”

“Do you have any idea where we’ll arrive?” Mitan asked.

Swan answered, “We all studied the sketch which Erg’Ran made for us of the interior of Barad’Il’Koth as he remembers it, and you, Mitan, as well as Erg’Ran and I have second-sighted Barad’Il’Koth’s exterior. I think that I can make us arrive somewhere safe. I’m hoping that we’ll be in the anteroom to my mother’s great hall. From there, if Erg’Ran has recalled correctly, we will have direct access to all of the main passageways within the keep.”

“I believe that I speak for us all,” Erg’Ran announced. “We are ready.”

Swan merely nodded.

Swan outstretched her arms, her hands grasping for the magic in the air around her, feeling its current surging through her body, strengthening her. She uttered the words of the place-shifting spell. Swan pressed her palms together between her breasts, becoming one with the energy around her.

Light, dazzlingly bright, filled her, exploded from her. There was a sound, soft, like the rumble of thunder heard at a great distance.

A darkness that glowed like light but was neither light nor dark was all around Swan and the others. The glowing darkness lingered, nothing replacing it. For an eyeblink, Swan’s concentration nearly failed her, as she feared that somehow, in some way, she had made a mistake. There was a light again, and Swan beheld bleak stone walls on either side of her, smoldering tapers going on and on, endlessly into darkness. When she looked around, Al’An, Erg’Ran, Mitan, Gar'Ath and Bre’Gaa were with her.

They were inside Barad’Il’Koth, but not where they should have been.

“Where are we?” Mitan whispered, voicing Swan’s own concern.

“Not the anteroom,” Erg’Ran declared. “This is the passageway leading between the barracks for the Horde of Koth household guard and the keep itself. Down a hundred swordlengths or so there is an additional passageway, which leads to the barracks for the Sword of Koth. That is on the right. On the left, another passageway leads to the main stables. The passageways are here in order to facilitate movement between the principal structures within the fortress in the event of attack. They are chiefly used, however, when the snows are too heavy above.”

Gar’Ath, sword in hand, asked, “And, to the keep?”

“That way, swordsman.” Erg’Ran jerked his thumb in the opposite direction from which they were faced.

“I’m sorry,” Swan announced. “I must have misjudged.”

Al’An took her hand, telling her sincerely, “Hey, we’re inside, we’re not surrounded by bad guys and we know which direction to go in. You did great, darling.”

Swan smiled and kissed Al’An’s cheek, then drew her sword.

They began moving along the passageway, Swan following close behind Erg’Ran who led the way, Al’An beside her. Erg’Ran’s axe was lashed to the girdle at his waist, a sword in his right hand. For the first time, Swan truly noticed the sword. She touched at Erg’Ran’s shoulder and he glanced back at her. “Is that your father’s sword, uncle?”

“Indeed, Enchantress. The very same.”

Swan understood why he carried it, and a chill ran along her spine at the very prospect of encountering her mother.

Periodically, as they crept along the dank passageway, they would stop, Swan and Mitan second- sighting ahead and behind them. Each time, they spied no sign of life and continued along their route.

“We near the keep, Enchantress,” Erg’Ran announced after a time.

Gar’Ath whispered hoarsely, “Let Mitan and me go ahead, Enchantress. She can second-sight for danger, and if there is any...”

Al’An volunteered, “That’s a good idea, but I’m going with. If there is a trap, my firespitters might be the only way out, assuming that they work.” Al’An didn’t wait for her approval, and Swan secretly liked that. “Bre’Gaa?”

“Yes, Al’An?” Bre’Gaa responded.

“Would you keep an eye out behind us? If there’s a trap, the logical thing would be for them to close us off from both ends of the corridor.”

“The minions of the Queen Sorceress will only reach the Enchantress over the corpses of Erg’Ran and myself. Be assured of that.”

“You guys wait a little while so that we have a head start,” Al’An told them.

“Al’An—be careful,” Swan heard herself saying to him.

When they were still fifty yards or so from what looked to be the end of the passageway, Garrison, Gar’Ath and Mitan stopped, so that Mitan could second-sight. “There is a chamber beyond the passageway,” Mitan whispered. “This is very bad, very bad.”

Alan Garrison failed to grasp the cause for such enthusiasm. “What do you mean?”

“Come ahead, but quietly, Champion, and you and Gar’Ath will see.”

They continued to the end of the passageway. It had seemed to go on forever. Looking at his watch was useless in Creath, of course, but Garrison guessed that Swan, Erg’Ran and Bre’Gaa would be about ten minutes behind them.

The passageway opened onto a low-ceilinged, pie-wedge-shaped chamber—narrow where Garrison, Gar’Ath and Mitan lurked in hiding, gradually widening toward a very high, arched opening at the far side.

There was absolutely nothing on the chamber’s floor. But, at regular intervals along the chamber’s walls were mounted a succession of sculptures, grotesquely shaped icons which resembled horribly shaped miniature humans about the size of small monkeys, all of them naked, with huge, bulging eyes.

“I had heard that the Queen Sorceress had done this, but I was unbelieving of it.”

Garrison looked at Mitan. “Unbelieving of what? They’re just ugly little statues, right?”

Gar’Ath answered for her. “They are Tree Demons which the Queen Sorceress has spell-changed.”

“She turned them to stone?” Garrison asked.

“Yes, but they still live and will know when we pass them and they will attack us,” Mitan told him.

“Tree Demons were the things which nearly got Erg’Ran and his father years ago, right?” Garrison asked.

“They are some of the evil creatures which, before the Queen Sorceress undertook to destroy Creath, lived only in the deepest recesses of the forests,” Gar’Ath informed Garrison. “I was attacked by such creatures, as you know, but was able to speed past them, suffering little injury.”

“What do they do? Bite?” Garrison queried.

“Worse than that. They will bite, but their goal is to sink their teeth in so deeply,” Mitan recounted, a shiver visible as she spoke, “that they cannot be torn free without the victim ripping away a large piece of his own flesh. They eat anything living, but are especially fond of human flesh.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Garrison said, shaking his head. “And, if I get this right, when we walk past them, they’ll come alive and attack us?”

“Yes, Champion,” Gar’Ath nodded gravely.

“Anybody have any brilliant ideas?” Garrison looked at Mitan, then at Gar’Ath. Neither of them seemed ready to volunteer. “Okay, we can’t go in a different direction without walking into troops. We can’t magically transport ourselves past here, I imagine, because if there was a remote chance that Swan’s mom would somehow sense us entering the castle, using magic to transport ourselves within the castle would probably be a dead giveaway, right?” Garrison looked at Mitan.

“Correct, Champion.” Mitan nodded.

“If we make too much of a racket fighting these ugly little guys, we’ll alert some of Eran’s troops—probably. Right?”

Gar’Ath answered, “That is true, Champion.”

Mentally, Garrison stepped back from the problem. The petrified Tree Demons were being used like motion sensors in an Earth-style alarm system. “That’s it!”

“What is it?” Gar’Ath asked him.

“Question, Mitan?”

“Yes, Champion?”

“Could Swan use magic which didn’t involve place shifting, just natural magic, the low-energy kind, without a great risk of alerting her mother?”

Mitan seemed to ponder Garrison’s question before responding. At last, she told him, “There must be magic in use throughout the entirety of Barad’Il’Koth. There are witches here, who are magic users, of course, and she would have guarding spells in place, other types of magic in constant use. No, I don’t think that the Queen Sorceress would sense a reasonable amount of natural magic. Otherwise, she would be constantly interrupted by the magic all around her.”

Garrison still had to work out whether the answer was heat or cold...

Her skirts bunched in white knuckled fists, Eran ran along the passageway toward the closed chamber door at its far end. Her magic had almost been fully restored when the naval maneuvers along the coast of Edge Land began, but, in a very short time, between whisking entire units of Sword of Koth from one point to another and second-sighting six separate ships, it had become sorely depleted once again. It was obvious that this was her daughter’s plan, to exhaust her magical energy. It was working.

“Damn her I will!” Eran screamed. The masked Sword of Koth was barely able to drop to one knee and bow his head as she streaked past him.

Normally, the shackles and her spells were sufficient to secure the chamber’s occupant, but she could take no chances with her daughter’s followers afoot. Eran stopped at the doorway and willed the door to open, ran through and kicked the door closed behind her.

“You’re upset again, Eran.”

“This is your last chance, Pe’Ter! I have had enough of your insolence!”

“What are you going to do? Kill me? Turn me into something vile and disgusting? Oops! I forgot. You already did that, when you decided that there was only one thing you needed from me.”

“I want an answer, not philosophy, Pe’Ter!”

“I’d give you an answer the way you deserve to hear it, but you’d think it was an invitation.”

Eran thrust her right hand toward him and willed him to be seized with pain throughout his entire body.

Pe’Ter had been standing beside the solitary window when she entered the room and confronted him. Now, he writhed beside the window, collapsing to all fours, then rolling across the floor in agony.

Eran cleared the spell. Breathless, Pe’Ter looked up at her from the floor, whispered, “You are afraid, aren’t you, Eran?”

“You will be, Pe’Ter. You will be.” Eran had done what she was about to do only once before in order to force Pe’Ter to cooperate, bend his iron will to her own needs. But it pained her to do it, making her recall feelings she did not wish to remember that she had ever had. And it was particularly dangerous at this juncture, because she would consume all of her remaining magical energy in order to achieve the result which she so desperately needed...

Peter Goodman fingered his pack of Luckies, his eyes focusing on the green on the package. “You think she’ll come?”

“She’ll come, lieutenant.”

Goodman stared at the cigarettes. “Ya know, my mother used to tell me that smoking cigarettes would kill me, Dave. My dad used to call ’em coffin nails. He smoked Fatimas till the day he died.”

“Look, lieutenant. The way I figure it, if some damn Nazi shell don’t fall on us or GI food don’t poison our guts out, we got life by the tail. I ain’t even seen my littlest kid, ’cept them box Brownie Kodaks Betty sends me in her letters. And I got the garage waitin’ for me. I’m gonna live to be a hundred. And I’ll still be smokin’.”