The Warlock of Rhada (13 page)

The dream again, Emeric thought. It was only last night between the rising of the moons that Glamiss had told him of it. Yet here he was, as caught up in the strange wonder of it as Glamiss himself. Was this the force of the power men called destiny?

He shook his head exasperatedly. He had been in the hinterlands too long. Glamiss was only a lowborn mercenary leader of troops--not some great conqueror. He was a boy, really, barely even old enough to claim a man’s state and weapons. Still--didn’t every true conqueror begin this way? In Algol he had learned the legends of Philip of Macedon, of Temujin, whom men called Genghis Khan, of the man known as Bonaparte. All of these and others had begun as simple soldiers. The Navigator smiled thinly. If Glamiss should ever become what he imagined he might become he would have to prohibit the teaching of such legends lest other simple warmen dream of empires. . .

“What are you grinning about, Emeric?” Glamiss asked, as they moved between the buildings to the market square.

“Daydreaming, Glamiss,” the priest replied.

“Save it for when we are safe within the mountain, my friend,” Glamiss said.

“In
the mountain, Glamiss Warleader?”

“Do you see anything
outside
the mountain worth taking?”

Suddenly, as if in answer to Glamiss’s rhetorical query, the silence was torn by a screaming blast of sound: voices, brassy music, and the throb of great military drums. Glamiss wheeled Blue Star and signaled the troopers to take cover.

Emeric tried wildly to discover the source of the thundering noises, but there was nothing. Then his body felt a growing, icy chill of dread as he saw the swirling darkness forming in the marketplace. It was a blurry shadow that covered the width of the entire square, and it seemed alive with flashes of light that, curiously and terribly, seemed to be developing substance.

Glamiss sat astride the snarling Blue Star, his flail and sword drawn and ready. The warmen had melted into the alleys between the hovels, terrified (as was Emeric) but responsive to Glamiss’s discipline.

When the Navigator looked again at the square, he was shocked to see that it was filled with warriors: strange men in armor not unlike his own iron mail, but decorated with brilliant tabards and surcoats bearing devices he had never before seen. The soldiers were gathered about a handsome young man with hair the color of gold, shimmering in the sunlight and blowing strangely to an unfelt wind.

Emeric looked about him desperately. Where had the soldiers come from? The square and the village had been deserted only an instant before and yet now the place swarmed with these brilliantly caparisoned and armed warriors. Glamiss signaled him to take cover with the others, but he himself sat astride Blue Star, watching the hundred or so soldiers in the square through narrowed eyes. He would have spoken to them, demanded to know whose men they were and what business they had in a village belonging to the lands of Lord Ulm --but the words died in his throat, for the richly armed company was paying not the slightest attention to him, nor to the remainder of the troop--which they surely could not have avoided seeing.

“Emeric!”
Falling back into the mouth of a narrow way leading into the square, Glamiss signaled to the Navigator.

“Holy Star protect us!” Emeric said fervently, making the same witchsign that had only a short while before so irritated him when made by the men.

“Emeric,
listen!”

The sound of military trumpets and drums had faded and the words the strange warriors spoke came clearly across the square.

“What language is that?”

Emeric strained to make out the words. He had no trouble hearing, for the talk was now clearly audible, and the phrases and words perfectly pitched. But the language--Holy Star, it wasn’t Empire Anglic--exactly. Yet it was so similar that it tantalized the listeners ear with familiar words and cadences.

“I don’t know, it--”

“Listen!”

Emeric turned to stare. The fair-haired boy was addressing his soldiers. It was obvious that he was the greatest personage in that strange gathering, for when he spoke, all listened with respect.

--No, faith, my coz, with not a man from England: God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honor, as one man more, methinks, would share from me, for the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made, and crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us--

Emeric studied the soldiers at the edge of the group. There was a strange and shadowy quality to them, as though one could almost see
through
their bodies. The Navigator shivered and made the sign of the Star. This was the Warlock’s witch-work, and yet--and yet--those words the handsome boy warleader was speaking. He
knew
those words, or some very like them.

“Glamiss--”

The Vykan gripped his mailed arm to silence him, listening. The boy now stood atop what appeared to be a magnificently decorated brass cannon. His voice had risen in pitch and timbre. The surcoat he wore glittered in the sunlight and his flaxen hair blew in that unfelt witch-wind.

This day is called the Feast of Crispian: he that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispian. Fie that shall see this day, and live old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, and say, “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian: “ Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day. “ Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, but he’ll remember with advantages, what feats he did that day
!--

The words and rhythms were becoming clearer in Emeric’s mind. Anglic it was, yes, but not the language of the Empire. No, it was far older than that, it was the tongue called English, after the ancient island in the Atlantic Sea of mythic Earth. It was the way men spoke in that place in the beginning of history--in that legendary time called the Dawn Age!

--then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son; and Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered; we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he that sheds his blood with me shall
be
my brother. Be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispian’s day.

Emeric was startled to hear the sudden shout from Glamiss. The Vykan dug his heels into Blue Star’s flank and galloped out into the marketplace toward the strangers. Emeric was shocked to see that Glamiss was waving his weapons to assemble the troop. And he was
laughing,
shouting with laughter, making the square echo with it.

“Emeric!” the Vykan called. “Out! Come out here!”

The Navigator eased Sea Wind forward warily. Glamiss turned to face him, his teeth showing white in an insane grin. “It’s a
play,
Emeric! They’re
actors’.’’

The realization was like a burst of light to the Navigator. He remembered now the vague allusions to the image-projections, the holographic films of the Empire. It was very like the navigational holographs produced by the starships.

Then the significance of the images in the marketplace began to broaden. So the Warlock had at his command the magic (call it science, Emeric, he told himself) of the Empire --some of it, at any rate.
Functioning
machines. The implications were staggering. Did Glamiss understand them as well?

The Navigator looked at his friend, who was galloping Blue Star around the marketplace--passing
through
the projected images with shouts of delighted laughter. The warleader was behaving like a truant boy, swinging his flail through the holographs in glittering arcs while the fair-haired actor declaimed:
“I
pray thee, bear my former answer back ... the man that once did sell the lion’s skin while the beast liv ‘d was killed with hunting him--“

The warmen of the troop moved cautiously into the square, half-frightened and bemused by the sight of their leader galloping through the seemingly-solid substance of the martial host.

Glamiss stopped Blue Star in the center of the marketplace and raised his eyes toward the looming glacier. “Warlock!
Warlock!”
he roared, his voice tinged with wild delight. “I know your secrets, Warlock!
I’m coming to take them!”

There was not, Emeric realized, a chance that the silver-robed sorcerer on the mountain could hear Glamiss, and the Vykan knew it. But it was fitting to the marvelous insanity of the moment that Glamiss should shout a challenge like that. Emeric felt it and so did the others in the troop; the marketplace filled with their clamor. The men who were still apprehensive and wary of the shadowy warriors in the holofilm were sustained and buoyed up by their leader’s defiance.

Glamiss, his head thrown back, weapons raised, was calling again to the owner of the mountain’s magic. “I know you, Warlock! I know about dreams and illusions! You are my brother, Warlock! We’re both mad and I’m coming for you now!”

The Navigator rode to Glamiss’s side and spoke quietly. “Glamiss--”

The Vykan turned and said to Emeric, quite calmly, “Do you realize what this means, priest? Up there, somewhere on that mountain, there are
still machines with power to run them--’’

The Navigator made the sign of the Star. “Abominations, Glamiss. The lnquisiton was right. The Adversaries live in this cursed valley.” His voice trembled with revulsion, remembering, as a priest should, the tales of the falling suns, the death of billions that accompanied the dissolution of the Empire.

“I want those machines, Emeric,” Glamiss said in a dead level voice. His wild enthusiasm seemed muted now, and Emeric realized that it had been largely a show for the men, a display to hearten them for a foray up the moraine.

He frowned, thinking that his friend had been changing steadily ever since entering the valley of Trama-Vyka. Very gradually the simple warrior had been turning--into what? A schemer, a traitor to his bond-lord? Worse yet, into a blasphemer and a seeker after forbidden knowledge and power?

That was the worst of it--for Emeric, priest that he was and an officer of the Holy Inquisition, felt the same terrible temptations. If there were truly imperial machines in that place, what strange powers might they bestow on the man who took them for himself? The crown and feathered cape might not be a vain dream, after all. But at what price? Was he, Emeric Aulus Kevin Kiersson-Rhad, prince of the Northern Rhad, priest and pilot of the Holy Order of Navigators, failing in his holy mission as chaplain here? Were the Adversaries, Sin and Cyb, stealing the soul of his friend before his very eyes?

“If there are machines, Glamiss--”

“And there are,” Glamiss interrupted him, pointing at the holographic figures his troopers were now tentatively examining.

“
If
there are--they are the business of the Order and the Inquisition.”

Glamiss said evenly, “We spoke of this before, Emeric. I told you that what there is in this valley will be mine.” His eyes were pale and cold as iron.

“Even at the risk of your soul?”

“At the risk of ten thousand souls. Ten
million.”

“Then may the Star show mercy,” Emeric said in a heavy voice. And in his mind he saw the suns falling again and fleets of starships storming across the galaxy in war. Was it a vision? he wondered. Was God in the Star giving him some preview of the future?

Glamiss gripped his shoulder and spoke earnestly. “Don’t judge me yet, old friend. Don’t judge me at all, in fact. This may all be God’s work.” He smiled thinly. “Who really knows what waits for us up there on the mountain?”

Emeric, depressed, shook his head. “Not I, Glamiss.”

“Nor I. All we know is what lies behind us. A sullen animal--my lord Ulm--and a thousand men to kill us. You heard the Vulk say it.” He looked up at the glacier and the mountain with hungry eyes. “What would you have me do, Emeric? Shall we wait like weyr for the slaughter?” He favored the priest with his dazzling smile and Emeric could not suppress the lift it gave his heart. Glamiss had the gift of leadership, that was undeniable. It was his strength and his greatest danger. “Or shall we ride up the mountain like warriors and men to meet this warlock? Tell me what you will do, old friend.”