Part 24 (2/2)

”No.” Ehomba studied the motionless figure somberly. Bits and pieces of fractured armor were starting to slough away from the body. ”Only paralyzed, and that I think just from the shoulders down.

Eventually, he should recover all movement.”

She started to smile gratefully, then thought better of it, and instead turned her attention back to the rec.u.mbent torso.

Breathing hard, Simna ibn Sind joined his tall friend in gazing down at the motionless form. ”Hoy, only paralyzed? Why leave the job half finished?” He aimed the point of his blade.

”No, my friend.” Reaching out, Ehomba forestalled the swordsman's fatal intent. ”That is not what I came for.”

Simna eyed him imploringly. ”By Gulvent, bruther, he tried to kill you! Hedid kill you! Speaking of which ...” The swordsman turned to look at the indefatigable hulk that was Hunkapa Aub. Through his fur, the biggest member of their little party was smiling.

”I get it!” Simna blurted in sudden realization. ”You weren't really dead! You were faking it all along.”

Ehomba shook his head slowly. ”No, my friend. I was dead. Well and truly dead. I know, because I spent time in the place where the dead go.”

”Tell me,” asked Hunkapa Aub seriously, ”what is it like, the place where the dead go?”

”Slow,” the herdsman told him. Reaching out, he put a firm hand on the swordsman's shoulder and smiled rea.s.suringly. ”I knew that I was going to die, Simna. It had been foretold. Not once, but three times. Once by a seductive seeress the memory of whose beauty and wisdom I will always treasure, once by a dog witch whose insight and affection I will always remember, and once even by a fog whose persistence I will never forget. 'Continue on and die,' they said-and so it had to be before we could triumph.” Turning, he gazed gravely at the still unmoving body of Hymneth the Possessed: warlock, sorcerer, eminent ruler of ill.u.s.trious Ehl-Larimar.

”But that was as far as their predictions went. Nothing was said about what might happenafter I died.”

Raising his eyes, he smiled gratefully at the imposing, attentive, fraternal figure of Hunkapa Aub. ”Nothing was said that would preclude my being resurrected.”

Simna gaped at him, struggling to digest the import of his friend's serene words. Then-he grinned. The grin widened until it seemed to encompa.s.s the majority of his sweat-streaked face. And then he began to chuckle softly to himself. It never grew loud or boisterous like before, but it did not go away, either.

”Two sorcerers. All this time I've been traveling in the company oftwo sorcerers.” Turning, he confronted Hunkapa Aub, whose eyes had become suddenly wise as well as blue. ”As many days and nights as I have spent in your company, as many evils and dangers as we fought side by side, and I never suspected. I neverwould have suspected.”

Hunkapa Aub's smile widened slightly. ”Not all wizards look alike, good swordsman. Not everything in life appears as one imagines it to be. And it is not required that one be human to be a master of the thaumaturgic arts.”

Simna could only stare and shake his head in lingering disbelief. ”Why? Why the sham and the continuing charade? Why did you let the people of Netherbrae keep you in a cage and throw food at you and torment you with insults and curses?”

Clasping both immoderately hairy hands behind his back, the hulking wizard considered Simna's flurry of questions. ”You would not understand, good swordsman. Even a sorcerer needs to learn by experience.

I was traveling through that part of the world when I was accosted by the simple, shallow folk of that otherwise charming mountain town. I could easily have avoided capture, or freed myself at any time. But I was, and am always, curious as to what would motivate otherwise apparently intelligent and compa.s.sionate people to act in such a shameful fas.h.i.+on toward another of their fellow beings who had done them no harm. One can learn much about one's peers by spending time in a cage.

”Then you appeared in Netherbrae, and freed me. Finding you more interesting than anything else that tempted to engage me at that time, I chose to accompany you on your journey. It promised much of interest and elucidation. Suffice to say, I have not been disappointed.”

”But why the pantomime?” An unsatisfied Simna persisted. ”Why didn't you just tell us who and what you were from the beginning?”

Hunkapa Aub's smile was as sage as the look in his eyes. ”Wizards have this 'effect' on people, good swordsman. In the presence of one they become muted things and no longer act themselves. I wanted to study you as you are, not as you would have become had you known my true ident.i.ty.”

Simna stammered angrily. ”Study us? And what have you learned, maestro of a mumbling disguise, from the specimens you chose to keep so long in ignorance?”

”The best thing there is to learn about another. That you are good, all of you. Yea, even you, Simna ibn Sind, though you would argue long and hard to deny it. I know you well. You, and the great and n.o.ble cat.” Raising his gaze, he considered the lanky figure of Etjole Ehomba. ”Your friend and guide I am still not entirely sure about.” Hirsute shoulders rose and fell in a prodigious shrug. ”I think I will stay with you a while longer. I sense there is still more to learn from your company.”

”Well, it's a good thing you turned out to be more than the untutored, shambling simpleton you seemed to be,” Simna declared, adding hastily, ”I mean nothing untoward by that, master. Who would have thought you the more powerful sorcerer than Hymneth the Possessed?”

”Who said I was more powerful?” Hunkapa Aub's smile faded. ”I caught him unawares, after he had been tired and worn down by your friend Etjole. I did not defeat him. Ultimately, it demanded the combined efforts of both of us.”

”Hoy, however it was done, the important thing is that you were able to overcome him.” The swordsman glowered down at the rec.u.mbent, motionless figure from which ruined metal was sloughing like a second skin. As he did so, his eyes widened.

Exposed to the flicker of lamplight without his omnipresent armor, Hymneth the Possessed, lord of the central coast and absolute ruler of Ehl-Larimar the sublime, was after all had been said and done not all that he had appeared to be.

Curly black hair almost as thick as Hunkapa's covered the barrel chest as well as the long, ma.s.sive forearms. But beneath the bulky upper body were tapered hips and shockingly short, stunted legs. These too were intermittently overlaid with still more of the thick body curls.

Formerly strapped to and now detached from the undersized lower limbs and feet were a pair of whitened, dying legs that had been taken from a much taller man. Amputated from an unknown owner, these fleshy prostheses were dying before the onlookers' eyes, the magic that had kept them attached to the warlock's feet having been shattered along with the rest of his protective spells. Nothing less than stilts made of meat, they had covertly provided a good portion of the lord of Ehl-Larimar's imposing height.

Atop a bull neck sat a ma.s.sive head that seemed too large for the rest of the body. Thick, almost blubbery lips fronted a prognathic jawline. The ears were overlarge and set toward the rear of the skull.

Most striking of all was the forehead, sloping well back from the thick, bony ridges that shaded the eyes.

The raven hair atop the head had been trimmed short to eliminate the profusion of greasy curls to be found elsewhere on the squat body. It was a surpa.s.singly ugly face, a visage that fluctuated uneasily between homely and repulsive. A face that was not quite human, though Ehomba knew what it was.

Simna recalled a recent statement of Hunkapa Aub's.

”It is not necessary for one to be human to be a master of the thaumaturgic arts.”

Hymneth the Possessed was a neander.

The partially paralyzed wizard was impotent to smash in the faces that were staring down at him or strike the pitying expressions from their countenances. Defeated, frustrated, revealed, naked, and exposed, he could only moan and howl helplessly.

”Go on; look, stare, gawk at me. My people wonder why I never appear among them unhelmeted or without armor. It's because if they saw me like this, as Iam, they would repudiate me despite all my power and no matter what threats I rained down upon them. My forebears are from the far north, from the frozen wastes that cap the roof of the world. There they huddle, miserable and cold, dying young and struggling to eke out an existence I would not bequeath to a bird. Driven there by the 'healthy' ones. By people like yourselves.” Unable to move more than his head, he glared defiantly up at a silently watching Ehomba.

”OnlyI was different. Only I devoured everything the wise ones muttered and mumbled, storing their knowledge within my heart as well as my head. I studied, and learned, and vowed to make a life different from theirs. A life of power and dominion over those who shunned and jeered the neanders.

”When I had learned enough, I found my way here, to Ehl-Larimar. The journey almost killed me, but I took the throne from the weakling who sat upon it and remade it in my own image. I extended my control to encompa.s.s all of the central coast. I could have done more, could have conquered farther to the north and south, but I did not. Power I'd wanted, and power I'd gained.

”Having attained so much, still I was not satisfied. Having acquired power over the real world, I sought the same over the supernatural. I immersed myself in whatever necromantic lore I could find. But nowhere did I encounter a spell that would render me human. That would make me 'normal.' On learning that there was nothing I could do to alter my ugliness in the sight of people, I resolved angrily to surround myself with beauty.” Lifting his head, he nodded as well as he was able.

”The consequences of that obsession you see all around you. This castle, its furnis.h.i.+ngs, even the attendants and retainers who serve me within its walls; everything has been chosen as much for its attractiveness as for skill. It, and I, lacked only one thing: a consort. Someone to sit by my side, to be my queen. Feeling this great emptiness inside myself, I determined to seek out the most beautiful woman in the world. I found her, and took her from her lackeys and lickspittle suitors, and brought her here. A vain hope, perhaps, but I thought that given time and consideration and honor, she might come to at least tolerate, if not to love, me.”

Kneeling beside him, the Visioness Themaryl took up the refrain. ”He stole me away from my home and my family. My anger was boundless as the sea and the land I was carried across. I would neither converse, nor dine, nor sit with him.

”Then in the very late of one evening, when I thought the castle asleep, I stole downstairs in my endless search for a means or route of escape, and caught him slumped over his table, drunk-and unhelmeted.

At first I was repulsed. But my const.i.tution is not frail. I approached, and looked into his face that was half unconscious, and I saw the pain there.” She sighed deeply, remembering.

”After that, it was different. I was cautious, and I believe that he was afraid to chance too much, but in time we came to know one another. All my life I have been courted, and promised, and drawn back from a chorus of suitors and swains that sometimes seemed to stretch from my home to the moon itself. I found them all much alike: vain, unambitious, conceited, too much in love with themselves to love another.” She rested a hand on the exposed, thickly bearded chest. ”Here I found something-different.

If your journey homeward should take you back through Laconda, please a.s.sure my family that I am well, and content with my lot.”

Simna finally stopped laughing. Shaking his head at the irony of it all, he gave his tall companion a friendly slap on the back. ”Well, that's that, I suppose. All this way to rescue a princess who doesn't want to be rescued. Let's have a look around for the treasure and then I suppose we'll be off. There's nothing to hold us here any longer.” He started past the herdsman, heading for the main entrance to the audience chamber.

For the second time that remarkable night, Etjole Ehomba said, quietly but firmly, ”No.”

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