Fall of Angels (64 page)

  
"Isn't that the idea?"

  
"Unfortunately, but I still have trouble with the idea that people only respond to force."

  
"It's especially clear on this planet."

  
"It's clear everywhere, but in a high-technology setting, it's easier to ignore. On the powernet, you see a de-energizer beam, and a mirror tower, and, poof, the tower's gone. You don't see the demons die. If someone commits a murder, the government carts them off, and, poof, they're lase-flashed into dust. Here it's obvious and slow. I seem to feel it more and more." His eyes turned to Ayrlyn. "I suspect you do, too."

  
"I get so nauseated I can't hold anything down." Her eyes dropped. "It seems so ... weak. I tell myself it must be in my mind, but the reaction's so immediate, so physical..."

  
"It's more like a splitting headache for me. The last few times, it's been so intense I couldn't see or move for a moment or two."

  
"Great survival reactions for a violent culture." Ayrlyn's tone was dry.

  
"It's more violent here because Ryba's changing things, and change usually is violent."

  
"We're part of that change," Ayrlyn said. "And there's not much way to get around that."

  
After a long silence, Nylan finally asked, "You're really not going to sing that song, are you?"

  
"No. I've got another trading run to make." Ayrlyn laughed. "So I won't be singing it. Not now. I'll teach it to Istril. It's simple enough, and she's actually getting passable with the simple lutar we built. It doesn't have the depth of tone this one does, but it works."

  
"Why are you going to teach her that song?"

  
"Why not?" answered Ayrlyn. "As many untrustworthy people have said, 'Trust me.' "

  
"I guess I have to." He stood. "But the song's awful . . . 'a mighty mage'? You have to be joking." He paused, then asked, "Is it safe for you to keep trading?"

  
"It's as safe as sitting here waiting to be attacked, if I'm careful. We avoid the larger towns, and I've got some ideas where this Lord Sillek has his garrisons."

  
"I don't know. I don't like it." He shook his head.

  
"I'll be all right."

  
"Be careful."

  
"I will."

  
"And try not to sing that song anywhere."

  
"As these things go, it's a good song."

  
"Try not to have it sung for a while." Not until I'm dead, preferably, and I hope that s a long while, he added to himself.

  
"After I teach it to Istril... we'll think about it."

  
"Please don't." Nylan frowned. "I've sat around too long. After I get something to drink, I've got to find another lander panel to turn into low-tech weapons of destruction."

  
"Good luck." Ayrlyn rose. "I'm going back down to the loggers. It's amazing how experience changes people's views. After the cold of the winter, now all they can think about is making sure there's enough wood for next winter. That bothered them more than the short rations."

  
"Food wasn't that short. How are we doing now?"

  
"Those horses have helped a lot, and so have our local recruits. There's more out there in the forest than we knew." Ayrlyn shrugged. "For now, we're all right, but we'll need a lot more coin for supplies-a lot more."

  
Nylan started back uphill, conscious that Ayrlyn's eyes stayed on his back for a long time.

XCII

HISSL GLANCES AT the candle, then at the darkness outside. A lamp in the barracks courtyard casts a faint glow across the wooden steps that lead up to his quarters.

  
He looks at the beaker of wine on the table, already beginning to turn, for all that he has had the bottle less than a day, then back out through the window. Beyond the courtyard, on the far side, the windows of Koric's room are dark.

  
"Out with his woman," snorts Hissl. "He has his power and his woman, and Terek rides beside Sillek, and I... I wait for an attack that will never come, not while I am here. Not while Ildyrom knows I am here."

  
He fills the beaker from the bottle and drinks fully half what he has poured, wincing as he swallows.

  
A sense of unease fills him, and he looks at the flat glass on the table. Leaving the beaker half-full, he walks to the doorway.

  
A tall figure slips up the stairs, gracefully, yet not furtively, followed by a second smaller figure.

  
Hissl touches his dagger, but does not draw it as the others approach. Instead, he opens the door and waits.

  
The man who stops in the doorway fills it, and towers over both Hissl and the sturdy armsman in the cloak behind the stranger.

  
"I understand you bid me visit you, Wizard?" asks the visitor in accented speech. The tall man wears only a sleeveless tunic in the cool evening, yet his brow is damp, and his face appears flushed in the indirect light.

  
Hissl nods, "I did. What would a warrior, a true warrior from the Roof of the World, wish from a poor wizard?"

  
"To make our fortune. To keep the world from being changed. To provide you with fame and position." The tall stranger glances toward the table and the flat glass and the beaker. "Might we come in?"

  
"Of course." Hissl steps back and offers a deep and ironic bow; "My humble quarters await you."

  
The tall man takes the high stool and leans forward, waiting until Hissl seats himself. The cloaked armsman stands by the door.

  
"Why have you taken so long?" Hissl begins.

 
 
"I beg your pardon, Ser Wizard, but it has taken somewhat longer to accomplish the necessary."

  
"The necessary?"

  
The stranger smiles coldly. "To travel here. To raise coins. Such coins, I understand, are necessary. Gold, after all, is the mother's milk of ambition, is it not?"

  
"I had not heard it expressed quite that way," admits Hissl.

  
"You wish position and power. I offer that. With your help, we can take Westwind-"

  
"Westwind?"

  
"The Roof of the World. Once we take Westwind, the Lord of Lornth, I understand, will be most suitably grateful." The tall man wipes his forehead again.

  
"That is what has been said," offers Hissl cautiously.

  
"To take Westwind will require four things: good tactics based on knowledge, an adequate number of armsmen, a good leader, and a very good wizard." The stranger looks straight at Hissl. "You are said to be a very good wizard. You also must have some coins and contacts which would supplement our coins in hiring armsmen."

  
"Many would claim what you propose is impossible. Many have already died." Hissl's eyes stray to the blank glass on the table and then to the half beaker of wine.

  
"Hardly impossible. Difficult, perhaps, but nothing is impossible."

  
Hissl raises his eyebrows.

  
"When we take Westwind, you may have the lands and title that Lord Sillek offers. I will take Westwind, and offer immediate and faithful homage to His Lordship. I think he will accept it," the stranger says.

  
"How can I trust you?" asks Hissl bluntly. "You ask me to risk much. Why would you offer me the leopard's share?"

  
The stranger spreads his hands, then wipes his forehead. "Look. You wear warm clothes. Na- The armsman wears a cloak. I wear as little as I can, and I am hot. Given any choice, I would never leave the high peaks. I would die during a long hot summer in the lowlands." The man shudders. "I could not take lowlands if they were forced upon me."

  
"How would I know this?"

  
The stranger glances at the glass and then at Hissl. "You know."

  
"Why do you come to me, and not to Lord Sillek?"

  
"Because that would place him, and me, in a most difficult position. He cannot deal directly with a man associated with the angels, but he could accept the return of his lands, especially if that return is accomplished with the help of one of his loyal wizards.

  
"To some degree, I am gambling that he will accept a man who is a stranger paying homage to him. But he has said that he will reward the man who overthrows the evil angels and returns the lands to Lornth. Because you are a loyal subject and of Lornth, he will certainly reward you." The stranger smiles again.

  
"How, exactly, would you accomplish this?"

  
"By wizardry, and by unexpected attacks." The stranger clears his throat. "Are you interested?"

  
After a time, Hissl nods. "Yes."

XCIII

NYLAN BRUSHED AWAY a persistent fly, the kind that hurt when it bit, as he had learned the painful way, before pulling the alloy from the forge. He blinked as he turned. Although (he brick forge now almost reached the roof line, it did not block the direct afternoon sun that beamed down on his dented, and oft-reflattened and -smoothed makeshift anvil.

  
Huldran took the tongs. Nylan lifted the hammer once more, ready to hot-cut, wondering if Fierral's endless appetite for arrowheads would ever be sated. Then, again, did any military commander ever have enough ammunition?

  
He laughed as he finished the blank.

  
"Ser?" asked Huldran.

  
"Military commanders never have enough ammunition."

  
"If you say so, ser." Huldran looked puzzled.

  
Nylan lifted the hammer again, then paused as he glimpsed a motion from the corner of his eye. He turned his head. Ydrall, her dark hair now cut short, ran up the road. Nylan lowered the hammer, then raised it again and kept cutting until the new guard actually entered the smithy.

  
"Ser?" gasped Ydrall.

  
Nylan set the hammer aside, and brushed back another of the scattered but persistent flies. "Yes?"

  
"Istril and Jaseen, they said you should come," she said in Old Anglorat. "Ellysia is sick, very sick, and the other healer, she is off trading."

  
"What's that about Ellysia?" asked Huldran.

  
"She's sick. Very sick." Nylan set down the hammer. "It's your turn to do what you can all alone. I'll send someone up to hold the tongs for you."

  
Nylan hurried, not quite running, first to the bathhouse to rid himself of dirt and grime, and then back into the tower. Still damp, the engineer returned to the tower through the connecting south door.

  
Ryba, carrying Dyliess in the chest pack, met him at the foot of the stairs. "They called you? Good. She's really sick."

  
"I'll do what I can. Ayrlyn would be better." He paused. "Could you arrange to send a guard up to help Huldran while I'm gone? Cessya, Weindre, someone like that? She's trying to keep forging arrowheads."

  
"I'll take care of it."

  
"Thank you." Nylan hurried up the stairs.

  
Jaseen sat beside the bed. On her bed, a dozen cubits away, Istril held Dephnay and rocked the cradle holding Weryl. Ellysia's face was blotched and pale, and Nylan could feel the heat welling off her face. Her entire body was drenched, both in sweat and in an unseen ugly whiteness.

  
"What is this?" muttered Nylan to Jaseen.

  
"Massive systemic infection, I'd guess. We don't have any diagnostics, or those fancy nanotech probes."

  
"Please .. . help me, ser." Ellysia's voice was less than a whisper.

  
Nylan took a deep breath, sending his perceptions out, trying to find a nexus, a center for the infection, but there seemed to be none. The ugly whiteness oozed from everywhere within the stricken woman.

  
He wished he knew more about medicine and bodily systems. After a brief respite, he eased his senses out again, this time concentrating on her circulatory system, trying to strengthen the minuscule order he found there.

  
Had a touch of color returned to Ellysia's face? Was there a trace less of the whiteness around her?

  
"Still... so hot... do something .. .just look at me ..."

  
"He is doing something, Ellysia. Healers do it with their thoughts," insisted Istril from behind Nylan.

  
Even as he watched, Nylan could sense the faint order he had instilled crumble. Again, he forced himself out, to try to strengthen the ailing woman's internal order, to build dikes against the infection.

  
His own eyes blurred, and his head ached, and he looked blindly at the floor, seeing nothing. His knees started to shake, and he sank down on the planks beside the lander couch, trying to keep the room from swimming around him, even as he knew that what he'd done hadn't been enough.

  
He reached out, but it was too late. He slumped into darkness.

  
Someone was applying a damp cloth to his forehead when he woke. His eyes fixed on the silver hair.

  
"Ellysia?" he asked.

  
Istril shook her head. "She was better, but it didn't last."

  
Nylan started to shake his head, then stopped. Even that slight motion hurt too much.