The Wizards and the Warriors Read online

  "With this, I can conquer the world,' said Hcenmor.

  He was talking about the stone egg which sat on one corner of the table: a sullen grey weight lit by dull light from the twelve firestones which studded the walls of this chamber high in the Tower of the order of Arl. The everlast ochre cast no shadows.

  'Aren't you interested?' said Heenmor. in a voice which mocked his opponent.

  Elkor Alish. warrior of Rovac, said nothing, but studied the wizards and the warriors arrayed on the chess board. In chess, as iri real life, a wizard had a hundred times the power of a warrior - but wizards could still be killed.

  'Aren't you interested?' said Heenmor again. 'Believe me: the death-stone has power enough to conquer the world.'

  Alish raised his eyes.

  'What exactly does it do?'

  THE WIZARDS AND THE WARRIORS

  Hugh Cook

  THE WIZARDS AND THE WARRIORS

  A CORGI BOOK 0 552 12566 0

  Originally published in Great Britain by Colin Smythe Limited

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Colin Smythe edition published 1986 Corgi edition published 1986 Reprinted 1987 (twice)

  Copyright © Hugh Cook 1986

  Conditions of sale

  1: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. 2: This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions of Sale of Net Books and may not be re-sold in the UK below the net price fixed by the publishers for the book.

  This book is set in 10/llpt Times.

  Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd., 61-63 Uxbridge Road, Ealing, London W5 5SA, in Australia by Transworld Publishers (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 15-23 Helles Avenue, Moorebank, NSW 2170, and in New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (N.Z.) Ltd., Cnr. Moselle and Waipareira Avenues, Henderson, Auckland.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading

  THE WIZARDS AND THE WARRIORS

  Table of Contents

  Maps

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  About this edition.

  Maps

  CHAPTER ONE

  Name: Phyphor. Birthplace: Galsh Ebrek. Occupation: wizard.

  Status: Master wizard of the order of Arl, with powers over light and fire.

  Description: very old gentleman with scarred beardless chin, bald pate, black skullcap, sheep's teeth, grey robes, iron-shod wooden staff, leather boots.

  Residence: Sunside Chambers, Prime Tower, Castle of Controlling Power, near Drangsturm.

  * * *

  It was Phyphor's birthday.

  He was 5736 years old.

  He saw no cause to celebrate.

  It was windy; it was raining; he was wet; his boots were leaking. The sheep's teeth set in his jaws by enchantment were aching. He was a long, long way from home. And he was advancing into danger.

  'We should reach Estar today,' said Phyphor to his travelling companions. 'So be prepared!'

  His two companions were his fat, slovenly apprentice Garash, and a youngster named Miphon who had less than a century to his credit. In Estar, the three of them hoped to find the renegade wizard they had been sent to kill.

  They were not in pursuit of any ordinary renegade, such as the lord of the sea dragons, the notorious Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, wizard of Drum. No, they were after a far more dangerous quarry.

  In defiance of the Confederation of Wizards, the maverick Heenmor had looted an artefact of power from the Dry Pit in the Forbidden Zone.

  Phyphor's party had to seek out Heenmor, kill him, recover whatever he had stolen from the Dry Pit and present it to the Confederation in the Castle of Controlling Power.

  Their chances of success and survival were, in Phyphor's estimation, about ten per cent.

  * * *

  Name: Miphon.

  Birthplace: Driftwood Islands.

  Occupation: wizard.

  Status: Minor wizard of the order of Nin, with limited powers to hear and control the minds of wild things.

  Description: slender man of youthful appearance with green eyes and a ready smile; dressed in woollen underclothes, waterproof leather outers, well-greased boots and a broad-brimmed feathered hat.

  Residence: lives as a travelling healer with no fixed abode.

  * * *

  When Phyphor's little band encountered the evil wizard Heenmor, Miphon's only task would be to charm away the lethal copper-strike snake which always accompanied Heenmor.

  Even so, he stood a good chance of getting killed.

  After the catastrophic wars of antiquity known as the Days of Wrath, the Founders of the Confederation of Wizards had written this:

  'Know that the Dry Pit contains power sufficient to destroy the world. As you value your lives and the world which supports those lives, preserve our absolute

  ban on the Dry Pit and the Forbidden Zone which surrounds it.'

  Heenmor had defied that ban.

  Heenmor had raided the Dry Pit.

  Heenmor might be ready - even now - to destroy the world.

  So how could they hope to defeat him?

  Miphon did not worry about it at all, but wondered, instead, what new delights awaited him in Estar. Right now, he was enthralled by the rugged landscape they were travelling through. He made no mention of his pleasure to Phyphor and Garash, as both had grown dour and sour on their long journey north along the Salt Road.

  Miphon wished the other two could share his joy in the wild and wond
erful array of landscapes, vistas, cities, towns, villages, rocks, animals, seascapes, trees, foods, smells, songs and languages which they had encountered on their journey.

  But the two wizards of Arl were immune to Miphon's enthusiasms. They were always at their worst when it was raining. And right now it was raining quite heavily.

  So, as they went north along the Salt Road, with overbearing mountains on the right, and the grey tumult of the Central Ocean on the left, Miphon contented himself by singing songs of love and wonder to the donkey.

  It is worth noting that Miphon, thanks to his sensible dress, was more or less waterproof, whereas both Phyphor and his apprentice Garash were soaking wet.

  * * *

  Name: Smeralda. Status: beast of burden.

  Description: patient grey four-legged animal burdened with books, blankets, manuscripts, herbs, tent,

  quilts, cooking pots, fish hooks, fishing lines, mosquito nets etc. etc.

  Musical taste: severely limited, despite Miphon's best efforts in this direction.

  Late in the day, the three wizards - with their donkey in tow - reached the southern border of Estar. There a flame trench stretched for a thousand paces from mountain cliffs to the sea, which steamed where the trench continued for another hundred paces underwater; waves surging up the trench toward the mountains boiled away to nothing before they travelled half the distance.

  Phyphor had been here before.

  In the days of the Long War, Phyphor and other wizards had defeated the Swarms, here on the southern border of Estar. They had defeated the Swarms, but only with the help of a storm that had raged in from the Central Ocean - a storm so fierce that the legends later made said it had shaken teeth from jawbones and set the mountains to creaking. Certainly it had scattered the Neversh, breaking their strength.

  It had been so close.

  Only the storm had saved them.

  If the Swarms had broken through, they could have spread north to the continent of Tameran and west to the Ravlish Lands. As it was, the Swarms had been driven back to the Deep South, where the wizards had built the flame trench Drangsturm and the chain of castles where the Confederation kept watch, and was pledged to keep watch forever if need be.

  Though he had been here before, Phyphor scarcely recognised the place. The trench had not been maintained since the Long War, though the rubble, rubbish and erosion of four thousand years had not sufficed to fill it. A rutted track plunged to a greasy wooden

  duckwalk laid across the steaming mud at the bottom, then climbed the steep slope on the other side.

  Nearby was a small, ruinous fort which had once guarded the southern side of the trench. On the far side, scattered blocks of masonry showed where men had once built something which the years had since pulled down.

  'We'll cross tomorrow morning,' said Phyphor, who saw no need to risk that breakneck slope in the failing light, where an old wizard might miss his footing in the gloom and end up waist-deep in ovenhot mud. 'Tonight we'll shelter in the fort.'

  'A damp, ugly ruin if ever I saw one,' said Garash.

  'Sleep in the rain if you don't like it,' said Phyphor.

  Miphon said nothing. Trying to play peacemaker between these two was, he had discovered, singularly unrewarding. Phyphor, having trained Garash, was deeply disappointed with his pupil, who had turned out to be reckless, power-hungry and amoral; Garash, for his part, bitterly resented Phyphor's refusal to release him from his apprenticeship, despite his mastery of his art.

  The wind, kicking up ripples in the puddles, found no gate to bar the way as it whirled into the fortress. Entering, Garash dared a Word of Location:

  'Onamonagonamonth!'

  He was richly rewarded.

  From half a dozen different directions, bell-like notes rang out. As the deafening noise died away, Garash cried, in great excitement:

  'There's magic here! There's power!'

  'Of course, fool!' roared Phyphor. 'My fire-iron, my staff of power, that oddment slung around your neck. Quite apart from all that, there's the power sources for the flame trench.'

  'Oh,' said Garash, crestfallen.

  'Honestly,' said Phyphor, 'Sometimes you're so stupid I feel like kicking you from here to breakfast.'

  Garash did not take that criticism well.

  'Let's explore,' said Phyphor.

  There was little to the fort but a courtyard, a crumbling wall surrounding it, and one squat tower. Wooden stumps, the remains of floor beams, were embedded in the towerstones at three levels. A separate, steadily rising curve of stumps showed where the stairs had been. Saba Yavendar must have seen similar things in the years of chaos after the fall of the Empire of Wizards, for he had written:

  Where wind may walk but men no longer, Stairs rise in easy stages to the vaults of air; Our lives have become to climb them.

  From the tower, strong stone steps curved away downwards, into the unknown.

  'I wonder what's down there,' said Garash.

  'Would you care to investigate?' said Phyphor.

  Garash wiped a drop of rainwater from the end of his nose.

  'I'll leave that honour to you,' he said.

  Cautiously, Phyphor started downwards, ready to blast any lurking monster with fire. He went quietly, but not silently. Rainwater dripped from his cloak and water squelched in his boots. Entering the darkness, he whispered a Word. His right hand began to glow with a cold light which glimmered on spider webs and damp stone.

  He turned a corner: and found treasure.

  A stack of firewood, lumped up in a cellar.

  It was damp, true, and colonised by woolly grey mould, but it was richness all the same. Small bones marked the cellar as an animal's lair, but no fur and fangs contested possession.

  'Treasure,' muttered Phyphor, kicking the firewood.

  He said a Word, and the glow from his hand died away. Standing there, breathing darkness, he longed to

  be back in the Castle of Controlling Power, which commanded the western end of the league-wide flame trench - the Great Dyke, some called it, while others named it Drangsturm - which reached from the Central Ocean to the Inner Waters in the east, so dividing the continent of Argan in two.

  'Hey, it's wet up here,' shouted Garash. 'Can we come down? Can you hear me? Is it safe?'

  'Come on down,' said Phyphor.

  Garash joined him, but Miphon stayed outside to hobble the donkey. By now, it was so dark that he was almost working by touch; the mountains were dissolving into mist. His job done, he took the heavy saddlebags down to the cellar and heaped some wood together for a fire. Phyphor threw a fire-iron onto the wood and muttered a few words. The wood steamed as winter damp dried out, then kicked into flame.

  'I could have used my tinder box,' said Miphon.

  Phyphor made no answer, not wanting to confess how badly the rigours of this latest march had chilled him. He was too old for this kind of expedition: that was the truth of it.

  The fire made them feel better; as Saba Yavendar said:

  Fire is always friendliest in a world of foes, Poor man's dancer, widow's warmer, child's enchanter;

  Always, even in the winter chill, as summer warm Toward my autumn bones, my widower's rest.

  While Garash grumbled about the smoke from the fire, Miphon cooked. They ate. Then they sat apart, mumbling through the Meditations of Power which allowed them to gather the strength they needed for sorcery, and the Meditations of Balance which prevented that strength from spontaneously destroying them.

  Then they fell asleep, to dream their separate dreams.

  Phyphor had nightmares about the Swarms. He dreamt of twisted shapes against the sky, twisted screams in the noon-day sun in the days when the Neversh flew. He dreamt of the Stalkers and the lowly scuttling keflos, of the double-hulled Engulfers, the green centipedes, the Wings, the tunnellers, the blue ants, and all the others - the fearless myrmidons of the Skull of the Deep South.

  Miphon pillowed his head on a stone, ignoring, as he se
ttled to his dreams, its distant grinding curses; the stone still remembered the pain when men, for their building, had split it to its present size.

  Once asleep, Miphon dreamt the dream of the stone.