The Golden Shield of IBF (55 page)

As Garrison felt that he was about to auger himself into the ground, his arm muscles felt an incredible tug. Garrison lost his balance, looked up. His sword’s hilt was still locked with that of his enemy, and his enemy was tumbling from the saddle.

Garrison let go of his sword, grabbing one of the automatic knives from his pockets, push-buttoning it open as he half-dove, half-fell onto his opponent. Garrison’s knife missed its target, burying itself half the length of the blade into the ground. Garrison’s left fist crossed the man’s jaw. A knee smashed up into Garrison’s abdomen, knocking the breath from him. Garrison fell back, but hadn’t lost hold of his knife. The man drew a dagger, clambered to his feet and jumped. Garrison rolled to his right, the Horde of Koth soldier impacting the ground. Garrison rolled left, and as the enemy soldier started to move, Garrison’s knife punched downward between the man’s shoulder blades.

Garrison sagged back. He looked up.

A Sword of Koth, firesword glowing red hot, charged him from horseback. Garrison wrestled his knife from the body of the man beside him, managed to get to his feet, no time even for the second knife.

He knew what he had to do, his only chance and a poor one at best. As he was about to throw a body block against the knees of the Sword of Koth’s mount, there was a flash of movement, the glint of steel.

The Sword of Koth soldier tumbled from his saddle. As Garrison looked past his fallen enemy, he saw Mitan, her sword freshly blood-slicked.

Garrison spotted his sword on the ground, picked it up, with his other hand closing and pocketing his knife, then grabbing for the reins of the dead man’s mount.

Garrison grasped the saddle and half-jumped, half-collapsed into it.

Raising his head, he saw Mitan again, gesturing that he follow her. Garrison nodded, the reins tight in his left hand, his heels kicking hard against the animal’s flanks.

The edge of the battlefield seemed much nearer than it should have been, and Alan Garrison realized that, if he were right, it meant that the armies of Barad’Il’Koth were being beaten back, Mir’s knights winning.

Garrison felt a moment’s alarm, Mitan swinging low out of her saddle, reaching for something on the ground. In the next instant, he realized what she’d reached for. She had recovered his shield.

A dozen yards or so away from the fray, Mitan reined in, next to Alan. “You fought well, Champion! The Enchantress needs you, and quickly!”

Garrison couldn’t have answered if he’d tried, his breath coming only in gasps.

Mitan was already galloping off, toward the brilliantly glowing vortex, toward Swan. Garrison thwacked the flat of his sword against the dead man’s horse that he rode, and followed.

A glance stolen over his left shoulder as he bent low over the horse’s neck revealed things at once heartening and frightening. Indeed, Mir’s knights were defeating the armies of the Queen Sorceress. But many of those knights, whom Garrison could see, and their mounts as well, were fading into transparency. He remembered Mir’s words to him: “The magic, Champion! The Enchantress’s magic is fading!”

And the Mist of Oblivion had grown to where it all but consumed the sky over the battlefield. Its fingers of deadly blackness were beginning to reach toward the ground.

Garrison dug in his heels, and rode toward the light of the vortex and Swan...

For some stupid reason, Alan Garrison held his K’Ur’Mir sword clenched tightly in his right fist as he ducked to enter the enclosure made from the knight’s surcoats, its framework from their splintered lances.

The sword fell from his hand. Involuntarily, Garrison turned his face away, shielding his head with his arms.

“Don’t be afraid, Al’An. You must aid me, my love.”

Squinting against the light, Garrison tentatively lowered his arms. What he had seen emanating skyward from within the enclosure had not prepared him for what he witnessed having entered.

Swan’s body lay seemingly lifeless at the enclosure’s exact center, as unmoving as if she were dead. The cone of magical light, which shown above the enclosure, out of which the vortex took its energy, emanated from within her hands, these clutched together between her breasts. But Swan’s voice came again, not from her body but from above. “Lie beside me, my love, and be unafraid.”

Garrison didn’t move.

“Swan? What’s going on?”

“I will die if you do not lie beside me Al’An, and share with me what only we can share.”

“What, uh, what are you doing with the vortex?”

“Lie beside me, Al’An.”

Alan Garrison looked upward, into the light. Involuntarily, he raised his arms once again in order to shield his face. There was no heat from the light, and despite its brilliance, as he gradually opened his eyes more fully, he could see, as if the light weren’t really there.

“What do I do?” Garrison stared through the light, at Swan’s ghostly image above him and the glowing vortex surrounding her. “What do I do?”

“Lie beside me,” her voice spoke again. He saw no movement in her image, and he felt his skin goosefleshing as he realized that he wasn’t hearing at all, that her voice was inside his head.

“I’m afraid, sweetheart. I’m afraid!” Garrison looked away, felt his hands tremble. His eyes turned to her lifeless seeming body. She would die, Swan had said, if he did not lie beside her. If she died, what was there to be afraid of? Death would be welcome. “All right! So, just, uh, just lie down and—and then what?”

“Lie beside me, Al’An.”

Garrison walked to the center of the enclosure, dropping to his knees beside Swan’s body. He bent over her, touched his lips to her forehead. Her flesh was neither hot nor cold, and she was neither alive nor dead.

Garrison looked up once more, told himself that he wasn’t seeing her ghost hovering above him within the glowing vortex, but her spirit or something, and that this was magic and, when she didn’t need it anymore, it would all go away.

Garrison kissed her lips. There was no response, of course. He laid down beside her, his eyes staring up into the brilliance of the vortex and Swan’s exquisite spectral image. A million thoughts raced through his mind. He’d really died when the bomb went off back in Atlanta and he was finally going into the light that everyone talked about in near-death experiences.

He was a tactless teenager again, and one of his buddies said that maybe, if he strained his eyes, he could see under Swan’s dress. He awoke from a scary dream and his mom and dad were beside his bed, his mom holding him, asking if he’d had too much ice cream and cotton candy, his dad wanting to hold him or say something, but trying to look as though he didn’t. He went into a dark house with two other agents, guns drawn, and then there was shooting everywhere and one of the agents was down and Garrison was dragging the guy’s body behind some boxes and there was more shooting and a too calm voice said, “We got him, fellas. Somebody get an ambulance. A couple ambulances.” He held a girl in his arms, a Ricky Nelson song playing on an oldies station; he was dancing with her, his palms very sweaty, and he was self-conscious because he had to be getting the back of her dress all wet from his hands. The SAT test. His number two pencil broke. It was the third pencil he’d broken. Gunfire from behind the packing crates on the other side of the warehouse, the gun-shot agent bleeding all over them both. He returned shots, too rapidly, his magazine empty. Where were his spare magazines? Had he brought a fourth number two pencil? Would the girl he danced with ever dance with him again? Did dad think he was a baby because he woke up crying from a bad dream? He wouldn’t look under a girl’s dress like the guys wanted him to, because she’d see him and she’d be embarrassed and maybe she’d cry.

Garrison blinked. Below him, he saw his body. He was floating upward, his body getting smaller and smaller as he rose into the light.

Within him, he felt Swan’s voice. “Al’An.”

“Yes, Swan.”

“The energy that is life which flows into us and from us and within us will be one, and all of the magical energy of the universe will be mine to command, my love.”

“Are we dead?”

“The answer would have no meaning, Al’An.”

Swan’s apparition hovered before him, and he could see his physical body far below them, beside hers, and he saw through the hands and legs and torso of the apparition which he had become.

Garrison was aware of moving, moving ever nearer to Swan’s specter. And, as if that which was not physical could touch, they touched, and something passed through him, filling him, electrifying him, this body which was not a body was within Swan and she was within him and he tried to say something, but was inundated by Swan’s being, lost within her. The Mist of Oblivion approached. The magical energy flowed from them into the vortex and the vortex seemed to explode, enlarging exponentially, its light brighter than a thousand suns, more serene than the freshest breeze, cool and soft, enveloping them and they were one with it.

They advanced against the Mist as its inky tendrils dipped to touch and devour the warring armies on the battlefield.

Within the Mist, there dwelt an entity as well. A part of them thought the word, “Mother!” The vortex touched the Mist, light touching darkness. Cold and fear gripped them and the vortex trembled and an infinity of images and feelings flowed through them. Specters, like that which they had become, but filled with terror and longing, passed through them, gripped them, shrieked out their horror, fled.

Weakness, draining, fear.

Light and dark fully commingled, the darkness drawn into them. Garrison was separated from Swan for an instant, an eternity. He could not tell which. The light of the vortex began to fail and the darkness enshrouded them. He was with her again, self-awareness ceasing, melting into oneness with Swan.

The vortex shuddered and its light grew and the darkness filled the light and the cold and the fear and the images of terror dissipated.

Alan Garrison’s flesh tingled. He coughed, opened his eyes. “I’ve got eyes!” He coughed, rolling over onto his side, his head on Swan’s chest. Garrison raised his eyes to her face, touched his hands to her flesh and felt something passing from him and into him simultaneously.

Swan’s eyes opened. “Al’An.”

“I’m here.”

“There is one more deed, my Champion, one more deed which must be accomplished.”

Garrison helped Swan to her feet, for the first time realizing that the sound of battle had ceased. “What happened?”

“The Mist has entered a vortex which shall never be opened again, Al’An.”

“And your mother?”

“I know what she is doing, and where she does it. We must go there.”

“The magic way?”

Swan raised up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Yes. Hold me in your arms, my love,” Swan whispered.

Garrison took her into his arms, and she turned around, her back to him. Swan outstretched her arms, her hands grasping for the magic in the air around her, Garrison feeling it, too, feeling its current surging through her body, strengthening her, strengthening him. She uttered the words of the place shifting spell which Garrison had heard her use before. Swan pressed her palms together between her breasts, becoming one with the energy around her, and Garrison one with her as well.

Light, dazzlingly bright, burst around them, filled her, filled him, exploded from her, magical energy enveloping them. There was a sound, soft, like the rumble of thunder heard at a great distance.

A darkness, glowing like light, neither light nor dark, cocooned them. The glowing darkness slowly faded. And there was light which was not magical at all, but the light of bonfires burning, flames flaring high on a bitterly cold wind, groping toward blue-black clouds in the steel grey sky above.

All was barren here.

Garrison knew the place.

They had ridden past it, across it in their escape from Barad’Il’Koth.

And now, he knew its purpose.

There were six fires in all, formed in a great circle. Surrounding the circle were the Handmaidens of Koth, their dresses, their head-to-toe translucent black veils flung to and fro at the wind’s caprice. The Handmaidens were formed into six circles, the six circles interlocked, thirty-six of the women in all. A great black horse, its leather trappings silver mounted, pawed the ground anxiously just beyond the circle’s perimeter.

A thirty-seventh woman stood within the circle of bonfires.

Alan Garrison felt suddenly stupid. He carried three “firespitters” which probably still didn’t work. His sword was miles away in the enclosure where he’d found Swan and dropped it. Two knives were his only weapons.

“You won’t need weapons, Al’An.”

“You don’t read my mind, do you?”

“No, but I know you, Al’An.”

They stood within the six-by-six circle formed by the thirty-six Handmaidens. The women chanted, perhaps in a trance, perhaps ignoring the intruders. “Can they see us?” Garrison asked.

“They could, but don’t. It would break their concentration, break the summoning spell in which their magic aids that of my mother.”

“Summoning spell?”

“Yes,” Swan answered, the single word she spoke revealing everything as Garrison looked within the circle of bonfires. Not only was there a thirty-seventh woman there, but there was something else, a body lying on a bier before her.

“Your father,” Garrison almost whispered.

“My mother has spent her magic, and unwisely so. Once I realized that she had chosen to use the Mist of Oblivion against us all, I knew what would transpire here. It must be stopped.”

Swan raised the skirts of her dark grey dress and began walking toward the ring of bonfires. The wind, growing in force, tugged at her dress, molded the fabric against her legs, began, inexorably, to dismantle the arrangement of her hair. Swan touched her hair, freeing it, the wind whipping it round her.

“You told me once,” Garrison insisted, “that you can’t raise the dead, that once the spirit has left the body, death is final. But what about Mir and his knights and his archers? And what about your father? And what about what happened to us? Back there, I mean.”