Part 22 (2/2)

The long journey through the desolate marshes took another day. Hurricane balked at the Limen, whose thickness and color and brightness fluctuated in unrelated, irregular cycles.

”Softly, softly,” Prospero murmured, stroking the horse's neck. ” Tis painful to thee, we've been here ere this, but fear it not, we'll pa.s.s it and go on. There's naught to fear of it, good fellow, good Hurricane . . .” and so on, until Hurricane lifted a hoof, placed it fastidiously in the marsh, and walked, s.h.i.+vering, into a rosy haze that turned a bilious yellow-green as soon as they touched it. Pheyarcet and the Well were left behind with that touch.

The pa.s.sage was brief and not overly difficult; Prospero was relieved. He had known it to seem days long, when forces from the Well on the Pheyarcet side and the Stone in Phesaotois had escaped to lap at the edges of their domains. Once across, Prospero praised Hurricane and stopped to give the horse water and a nosebag of oats.

As Hurricane ground up his oats, his master stood on a low dune-rise with his eyes closed, turning through a half-circle, seeking and sensitizing himself to the Stone that stood on faraway Morven, The thin trailing lines of its untapped power were few here; he observed their strengths and their locations relative to his and then sat down with a Map of Phesaotois and other tools to place himself in the universe he had now entered.

That took but an hour, and then he packed, mounted Hurricane, and nudged him to trot away into the monotonous dunes, following a meager Ley of the Stone. Hurricane went mortally slowly at first, until Prospero began drawing the Stone's power through the horse, and then he tossed his head and picked up his feet and cantered with something of his usual vigor.

Four rests were necessary before Prospero reached his goal, and he rested again just before crossing what he 204.

*EfizaBetfi judged was a threshold of awareness of sorts-another's, not his own. He repaired his travel-stained condition in a dark stone inn whose patrons were taller than he with sinewy, dark limbs and mottled long-nosed faces. Hurricane bore him onward after a few hours' sleep. Prospero carried now a blue tortoise in a sack behind him, and he stopped at a certain wide, flat place on a road that wound up and down through eroded sandstone hills to array its carapace and certain of its internal organs in the pattern prescribed by his Phesaotois Ephemeris.

Hurricane bore him on again, but now the hills to either side, ahead, and behind were indistinct to Prospero; he had joined the Road and stayed a few hours on it before leaving at a pair of giant white stone half-man half-lions..who reared up on their hind legs, facing one another, to form an arch. Prospero rode under the arch to a Ley, which brought him after a few more hours of hard riding to a brook. On this side, where he sat a moment letting Hurricane drink, there was nothing of great interest; the landscape was gently rolling, overgrown with trees and bushes, fallen into neglect. Collections of disorganized stones marked quondam dwellings here and there in the forest.

On the other side of the brook were green, neatly-kept fields and velvety lawns separated by low walls or hedges, adorned with prettily-distributed copses. Animals could be seen grazing in the fields or among the trees, and over all lay the warm light of late afternoon.

After fording the brook, Hurricane lifted his head and laid his ears back.

”Easy, my friend,” Prospero whispered to him, and laid his palm on the horse's head. He drew on the Stone and the horse tossed his head again, snorting, as the Stone surged through him. Prospero nudged Hurricane, and Hurricane went forward at a walk.

Meanwhile, the beasts grazing had taken notice of the intruders, one head after another lifting from the blossom-spattered sward as the alarm spread. Cattle, swine, horses, goats, and sheep came charging from all directions and Sorcerer and a (jentfeman 205.

pressed around Hurricane and his rider, pus.h.i.+ng them toward the brook again.

”Back!” Prospero cried. ”I have an errand here. I am duly grateful for your efforts to deter me, but I cannot gladden you by departing.”

The beasts milled about. Eyes rolled; nostrils flared. Among the bluish trees of the nearest copse slunk a low, grey shape: perhaps a dog or wolf.

”I pray ye permit me free pa.s.sage; I would not harm ye, but I must go on,” Prospero addressed the animals around him again.

Reluctantly they fell back and gradually dispersed again among the fields and trees.

Hurricane tossed his head again haughtily and cantered toward a narrow track which Prospero saw some distance away over the fields. Attaining it, they followed it for several miles through the lush and pleasant hills, all dotted with animals who lifted their heads to watch Prospero's pa.s.sing mournfully or phlegmatically, and at last crested a long rise to see, on a high, symmetrical hill before them, a great black pillar-porched temple.

White and black birds decorated the temple's steps with hyperbolic curves of long-feathered tails. Prospero dismounted, took off Hurricane's bridle that he might graze, and stood for a moment murmuring a warding spell over the horse. Then he slung one of the saddlebags across his chest beneath his cloak. The cloak concealed the bag, but did not conceal the black hilt of a sword at Prospero's left side.

He climbed the steps slowly, deliberately. Though the sun had lain on it all day, the stone was without warmth. The birds scattered unhurriedly before him, and a few went inside the shadowed porch.

Prospero followed them. The shade was cold and very dark.

Before him was a door as tall as the temple itself, a double door with tarnished, unworn cross-shaped bra.s.s handles at chest height in the center of each half. The doors were 206 -=> 'LlizaBtth <wittey carved=”” in=”” bas-relief,=”” but=”” exactly=”” what=”” was=”” carved=”” on=”” them=”” was=”” not=”” visible=”” in=”” the=”” darkness=”” of=”” the=””></wittey>< p=””>

Turning the left-hand handle and pus.h.i.+ng gently on the door, Prospero entered.

The door swung lightly away from him, and lightly swung closed at his heels with a dull echoing bang.

The interior of the temple was thick with black columns as the exterior had been thick with darkness. However, it was possible to see, because the roof extended only halfway over on all sides, leaving unroofed in the middle a wide, square black dais raised eight low, shallow steps above the floor. The sun was past the central opening in the temple's roof, but that central open square was bright; the darkness among the interior columns was less oppressive than that around those outside.

On the dais were four tall black torcheres, a transparent flame s.h.i.+mmering in the pan of each one, and in the center of the dais was a seated woman. She wore black, a soft, velvety black, veils and layers of it draped around her, clouding the shape of her body, a stark setting for the paleness of her long throat and face and arms and hands.

Three of the white birds cl.u.s.tered around her feet, their tails trailing gracefully down the stairs.

Prospero's mouth twitched a little. He walked without haste to the dais and stopped at the bottom step.

”Odile.”

”I knew you must return sooner,” said she, ”or later,” and smiled.

Prospero set one foot on the step and leaned forward, hand on his knee. ”Which am I, then? Soon or late?”

Odile shrugged. Her eyes were half-closed, her expression distant, amused.

Prospero shrugged also. ”I am here now. I will give, gratis, three guesses as to what the reason be.”

”1 would not demean myself by doing so,” Odile said. ”What is your errand, sorcerer?”

”I come to a.s.say the risk of a certain business before me,” Prospero said. ”A green journeyman hath challenged me. I have reason to believe you'd raise arms to avenge the chal- Sorcerer and a (jentkman 207.

lenger when I drub him and kill him. My Art so far ex-ceedeth his that I've all confidence that I'll do so; he's a gadfly, a most peremptory nuisance, who hath hired himself out in a war.”

Odile said nothing. Her eyes never moved; her face changed not a muscle.

”The challenger's name is Dewar, and he claimeth descent in the most immediate degree from you, madame.”

”Interesting,” she said.

”I've no desire to be at odds with you,” Prospero went on. ”If indeed he be your blood, I'd not kill him but confine him, a salutary lesson but not fatal.”

”He is my son,” Odile said. ”Confine him; and if you would have my goodwill, hither return him, that I may undertake to remedy certain lacunae in his education which resulted from his premature, willful termination of his apprentices.h.i.+p.”

”He seemeth a rash boy,” said Prospero.

”He is headstrong and treacherous. I rue his introduction to the Art, for his temperament is ill-suited to it.”

” Tis a regrettable, but a natural, error of affection,” Prospero said.

A brief silence pa.s.sed, during which Prospero studied Odile, smiling slightly, and Odile studied Prospero without moving in the smallest degree.

”So you are at war,” she said.

”Still.”

”This is a long war you are about. Or is it a different one?”

”A battle in the same, though mine own goal hath altered.”

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