A song for a woman calling a lover to her bed, but near enough the wizard's case to mock. He played only the ending, pointedly, as Varthlokkur strode into the hall. Usually the wizard was angered by it, but today he merely laughed and slapped the piper's back in pa.s.sing.

The Old Man, interpreting Varthlokkur's cheer as evidence he bore good news, shook some of his depression.

"You wanted to see me?" Varthlokkur asked. He was obviously more excited than he had been for a long time.

"Yes. But it might not be important now. You've brought news. What's happening?"

"The Game has finally opened," Varthlokkur replied. "No more empty maneuvers, no more recruitments.

Somewhere this fine morning-I don't know where or how, because they kept it d.a.m.ned well hidden-the Norns made their first concrete move."

The Old Man's depression retreated further. He grew excited himself. Battle had been joined. Armieswould march. There would be earthquakes, plagues, storms, and mighty works by magicians, as the Director used earthly p.a.w.ns to cast a tragedy... And he would be in the middle of it for the first time since the Nawami Crusades. He had missed the Director's more recent epics. "Great! And a minute ago I was thinking about going back to sleep..."

The piper tootled a pa.s.sage. The Old Man sprang up, raging. "Must we endure that fool? I've had too much of him and his ancestors' mockery!" His mood hadn't retreated far. The piper withdrew before anything more could be said. He was fearless, but not without sense.

"We need somebody to remind us we're only human," said Varthlokkur. He was pleased by the Old Man's reaction to the news. Despite the Old Man's rage, he broached a matter that had been bothering him. "There's something I want, if you'll allow it."

"What?" The Old Man continued staring after the dusky little piper.

Varthlokkur leaned, whispered.

The immortal countered, "You think she's willing?"

The wizard shrugged.

"Ask her after the ensorcelment, I'd say."

Varthlokkur nodded.

The Old Man clapped his hands. "Mika!" A servant came running. More returned from their hiding places. "Mika, go to the Wind Tower and bring us..." and he named a great many items. Varthlokkur nodded agreement to each. The Old Man knew his life-magicks.

"Marya, help him," Varthlokkur told a plump young woman standing nearby. "And tell your father that I want to talk to him."

She nodded quickly and hustled Mika toward the door.

Marya was Varthlokkur's personal servant, a position she thought the most important in the castle. Very much in awe of her master, she had, from that awe, conceived an emotional attachment. She worshipped him. Not a bright girl, she was, however, dedicated, and even that was more than Varthlokkur asked.

She was a dark woman, short, heavy and rounded. She fought her weight with an implacable stubbornness. Her attractiveness came from within: warmth and a capacity for unshakable love. She was an ideal interim woman, the first of the two Varthlokkur's destiny had promised.

The wizard spoke with the girl's father. There was a moment of debate. A certain magic was mentioned.

The father gave his a.s.sent.

Excitement rippled through the hall. The word spread: a sorcery was to be performed in the common room. The folk gathered for a unique treat. Their masters had never performed their wizardries openly.

Marya, Mika, and the equipment arrived. Varthlokkur and the Old Man set it up, established the preparatory runes, chanted the invocations, were ready. Varthlokkur quaffed a mug of bitter elixir, stepped to the focus of power for the magick. The Old Man, in a good tenor, sang the spell of initiation.

Then, silently, he waited, as did the scores in the darkening hall.Darkening? Yes. Soon all light had been banished save that of the cloud of gray silver forming about Varthlokkur. It grew increasingly dense, till he was totally concealed. Motes in the cloud sparkled, swept about the wizard like a tiny silver whirlwind. Sound came, increasing in pitch to a whine; colors swirled kaleidoscopically, mixed with animate shadow, splashing over floor and ceiling and walls; there were smells of lilac in spring, sour old age, boots wet in the rain, a thousand others quickly come and gone.

Then, suddenly, the silver dust winked away, or fell. Light waxed. A murmur ran through the hall. In the power nexus, round which the dust had orbited, a youngster of twenty-five stood where an old man had taken his position.

Yet there was no mistaking his ident.i.ty. This was Varthlokkur as he had appeared before the walls of Ilkazar, dark with dark hair, thin, hawklike of face, yet a handsome young man. He wore a winning smile as he asked Marya the question.

She fainted.

According to Varthlokkur's wishes, the Old Man, as Lord of Fangdred, married them later that day.

Marya went through the ceremony in a daze, unable to grasp her good fortune. Varthlokkur, however, saw it all with a cynic's eye, in schoolmaster's terms. He needed training in dealing with women. Marya would serve.

Yet he treated her perfectly from that day forward. She, not bright, counted herself fortunate-though there were times he unwittingly caused her sadness.

Varthlokkur, a man despite the darkness upon his soul, did conceive an affection for her as time pa.s.sed (rather as a man for a faithful pet), though never did it rival the feeling he had for she downtime. He permitted Marya no children for a long time, and then only when he saw that the lack was crippling her very soul. She bore him one child, a son.

They would grow old together, and eventually Marya would pa.s.s on. But during her lifetime Marya would witness the early moves in the Great Game begun the day of her marriage.

Seven years elapsed after the wedding. Early in the eighth the child was born, brown and round like his mother, with her quietness, and, from the sparkle of his eyes, blessed (or cursed) with his father's intelligence.

One cold winter's day, with a wind howling around the castle and snow blowing down from even higher country, with ice in places a foot thick in Fangdred's courts, Varthlokkur, the Old Man, and Marya took seats in the chill chamber atop the Wind Tower, watching the mirror. The wind rose with time, screaming like souls in torment. An unpleasant day for a birth. Another birth, overwhelmingly important to Varthlokkur.

The mirror presented a peek into a faraway room, deep in the heart of another wind-bound tower. In Ravenkrak, cold and stark as Fangdred, harsh as a weathered skull, home of the Storm Kings. A new member of that family was to arrive. A girl-child.

Marya didn't entirely understand. No one had bothered to explain. She felt distress at her husband's interest in the event. Why the interest? she wondered.

A bedridden woman lay centered in the mirror."She shouldn't have children," the Old Man observed. "Too slight. Yet this's her seventh, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Marya, to his initial remark. "She's in great pain."

Varthlokkur winced. He read accusation into her words, as though she were asking why she hadn't experienced that particular pain more often. She wanted more children. But the indictment existed only in his mind. She hadn't the guile or subtlety.

"The spasms are closer now," said the Old Man.

"It's time," Marya added, sympathetically.

Indeed. The woman's husband and a midwife moved to her bed. Servants sprang into action, bringing rags, hot and cold water, and spirits to ease the pain. In the background, a man with a falcon riding his shoulder fed wood to a huge fireplace, vainly trying to warm the room.

The woman brought forth a girl-child, as the divinations had promised. She was ugly, shriveled, red, and not the least remarkable. But Varthlokkur and the Old Man remembered another vision of her, as an adult, seen in the mirror earlier. Her father named her Nepanthe, after a magical potion which banished all cares from a man's heart. He placed her at her mother's breast, wrapped both against the angry chill, and resumed managing his castle. Unstaunchable hemorrhaging claimed the mother's life within the hour.

There was great joy in Fangdred when it was over. Varthlokkur and the Old Man declared a holiday and ordered a feast. A bull was slaughtered, wine brought forth, games taken out, contests held, and the piper driven to a frenzy of playing. The people danced, sang, and everyone had a wickedly good time.

Except Marya. She was more than ever confused, and her feelings had taken a battering.

And then the piper.

As day marched into evening and the wine-cask levels sank to the lees, as more than one reveler pa.s.sed from happiness into drunkenness, more than one mood abjured gaiety. The Old Man grew reticent and testy, till he spoke only in monosyllabic growls and snarls. In his cups, time piled on him, millennia deep in weight. All the evil he had seen and done returned to haunt him. "Nawami," he muttered several times.

"My guilt." All the boredom, that only his wickednesses had interrupted, returned to remind him how much more of both awaited his future. He grew increasingly depressed. Death, the specter he had never beheld, became a desirable, lovely, mocking lady, a will-o'-the-wisp forever an inch beyond his reaching fingers.

And Varthlokkur, too, found all his days returning as the lift of the wine began to fail and his temples began to throb. He remembered everything he wanted to drive from his mind: deaths in ancient times; his years in Shinsan and echoes of the bargains he had made there, that he might receive his education; and the hidden evils in his use of those who had become his allies in the destruction of Ilkazar. They were dead now, those people and those days-and many because of him. How many people had died with his name and a curse on their lips? He remembered the screams in dying Ilkazar... Till now they always had remained confined to his worst nightmares. But now, through the throbbing ache left by over-indulgence, they invaded his waking mind...

"Abomination!" the Old Man roared, hurling an empty flagon at the piper. He surged up, smashed a fist against the table. "I told you not to play that!"The piper, too deep in his cups himself, bowed mockingly, repeated the pa.s.sage. Silence enveloped the hall. All eyes turned to the Old Man, who had drawn a knife from the wreck of a roast. He began stalking the clown.

The piper, realizing he had gone too far, ran to Varthlokkur. The wizard calmed the Old Man.

Poor fool! No sooner was he safe from one Lord than he antagonized the other with pa.s.sages from The Wizards of Ilkazar. Anything else Varthlokkur could have forgiven. His mood wouldn't permit this.

He gave no warning...

A stumbling, lengthy spell he chanted, often pausing to correct his wine-tied tongue. With a sudden handclap and shout, it was done. The piper drifted upward, weightless. With a growl, Varthlokkur kicked him, spinning him across the room. He shrieked, flailed the air, vomited, and spun into the Old Man's...o...b..t.

It was a pity that Marya and the women had retired. A tempering feminine presence might have averted disaster.

The Old Man seized an arm, spun the piper, then hurled him into a ma.s.s of drunken retainers, few of whom had much love for the fool. The little guy habitually told truths n.o.body wanted to hear.

Pack instincts came to the fore. The piper became a shrieking ball bouncing about the room, with Varthlokkur and the Old Man leading the baiting. They were animals baying after defenseless prey, their cruelty feeding itself. Someone remembered the fool's fear of heights. In a whooping ma.s.s, the mob swept from the common room to the outer wall.

Hurled screaming outward, the piper hung over a thousand feet of nothing. He wailed for mercy. They laughed. The wind carried him away from the wall. Varthlokkur, smiling malevolently, drew the piper in until he clawed desperately at the battlements-then released him completely. Down with a wail he hurtled, crying his certainty of death, only to be stopped a dozen feet short of icy, jagged rocks.

The wind drove tendrils through tiny openings in Varthlokkur's clothing. The chill proved sobering. He realized where he was, what he was doing. Shame struck in a sticky gray wave, shattering his insanity.

He pulled the piper in, prepared to defend him... And saw there wasn't any need. The cold had had its effect on everyone. Most were leaving, to be alone with their disgrace.

Varthlokkur and the Old Man apologized effusively, offering rest.i.tution.

The piper ignored them. He said not a word as he hurried off to nurse his rage and fear. His departing back was the last they saw of him.

A distraught Marya dragged Varthlokkur from dismal dreams. Groaning with hangover, he demanded, "What?"

"He's gone!"

"Uhn?" He sat up, rubbed his temples, found no relief. "Who?"

"The baby! Your son!" Without comprehending, he studied what tears ha.d done to her dusky face. His son? "Aren't you going to do something?" she demanded.His head began clearing, his mind working. Intuitively, he asked, "Where's the piper?"

Within fifteen minutes they knew. The fool, too, had disappeared, along with a mule, blankets, and food.

"Such cruel revenge," Varthlokkur cried. He and the Old Man spent days in the Wind Tower, hunting, hunting- but finally had to concede defeat. Man and child seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.

"The Fates have used us evilly," said the Old Man. "Cruelly."

Indeed. They had taken a hostage to insure Varthlokkur's partic.i.p.ation in the Great Game.

Marya was disconsolate for a time, but eventually made peace with herself. Women of her world often had to accept the loss of children.

ELEVEN: The Fires that Burn...

Again, Saltimbanco sat in the chair before Nepanthe's fireplace-but she was away, Downdeep, tending the wounded. She should be back soon. Her workload had eased as wounds healed. She now had time to spend with her man-for so she sometimes thought him, and so everyone named him. Only Saltimbanco himself was unsure he fit the part. With matters so nebulous between them, she seemed little closer than a friend. Away, as now, she disturbed him not at all. In her presence his soul turned chill. There was something about her, icy and strange, incomprehensible, that made him feel stark emotional nothingness when she was near. He went through the motions she permitted, but they somehow seemed directed toward someone else, an imaginary construct, not the genuine woman. An emotional vacuum separated them, one he couldn't fill while her fears persisted. Oh, he had found s.e.x less important than he had earlier thought-but her unreasoning fear! It birthed an unnatural tension devouring the hope of their relationship. Seldom had he been so far at sea-almost as far out as she claimed to be herself.

As he sat thus thinking, examining the relationship, peering at the fire through half-closed eyes, there came a knock at the door. He rose, went, found Elana. "Woman is in Deep Dungeons."

"I know. Look, Haaken is out of his coma. They're going to talk to him. You want to come down?"

"Maybe later. Am needing report, though. Meanwhile, must talk with strange woman." He was silent a moment, then asked, "What is problem for same? Am unable to breach mental walls thicker than ramparts surrounding Ravenkrak."

"She's afraid..."

"Am making no such demands. Woman's body is her own. Am living without that. Is total aloofness and coldness which makes for sadness of this one."

"That's not her only fear. She's afraid she'll hurt you."

"Is stupid! Crazy."

"Foolish, anyway, but real enough for her. If we weren't besieged, she'd run away. She feels trapped. All her fears are closing in. She's uncomfortable. More than she's ever been. There's nowhere to run; she's afraid to accept; so she fights."There're cycles in her moods, you know. Sometimes she loves you and wants you-then the fear takes over. Then she can't fight. Or won't."

"What can this one do?"

"Be patient. What else?"

"Self, am being patient for many months. Love grows..." There! He had admitted it at last. "... but patience wears tinsel-thin. Is little finger of frustration-born wrath curling like serpent in back of mind. Is getting very difficult of control. Times are, self is tempted to scream, 'An end!', and go over wall, away, and d.a.m.ned be crazy woman with weird inside-of-head. Many pieces gold is not so tempting as surcease from mental mix-up. Wine and women soon make this one forget, is hoped. Soon, very soon, will do same. Beating head against wall is like for men outside castle. Gets nothing but sore spots.

Ravenkrak wall is impossible of scaling: no booty for men outside. Nepanthe wall is impossible of scaling: no treasures for sad fool. Will leave very soon."

Elana started to say something, stopped as a door slammed below.

"Weird woman comes," said Saltimbanco. "Am no longer in mood for seeing. Will slip out back way.

Come tell what Blackfang says."

Nepanthe arrived in time to witness his retreat. "What?..."

"He's unhappy."

"We're supposed to lunch together."

"He loves you, and you're not playing fair. He's thinking of going over the wall."

"He wants to desert?"

"Not desert. Escape. He feels trapped."

"Aren't we all? But it'll be over come winter."

"Don't be dense!" Elana snapped, harsher than she intended. "You're the reason he feels trapped. After getting nowhere for so long, he'd rather run and forget. Why should he beat his head against a wall?"