Sightblinder's Story Read online

  * * *

  Ben, wearied with a day and a night of struggle and flight, had fallen asleep more or less wedged into a stony niche at the base of the grotto wall, near the steps that did not look like steps. Roused now by faint sounds, he awoke to find the head of another old campaigner, Lady Yambu, pillowed on his ample stomach. Ben shook her lightly, and in a moment she was wide awake, head up and listening in the earliest light of dawn.

  The sound that had awakened Ben came again, softly. It was the faint splashing made by a paddle in the tunnel.

  “Zoltan’s back,” Ben whispered, and moved to crouch beside the pool, straining his eyes into the darkness of the tunnel’s mouth across the narrow reach of water. The grillwork gate, unlocked last night, was still swung back.

  Ben and Yambu were both on their feet and watching when the boat appeared. There was only one occupant—a tall man in his early thirties, now looking very much like his old self. When Mark stood up and stepped ashore, Ben seized him in a fierce, silent embrace, then held him at arm’s length. “You’re well?”

  “Well enough.” Mark sounded like himself. “Zoltan got us out to Draffut; and he, all the gods be thanked, was able to restore us. Then Zoltan stayed there with Honan-Fu, to explain to the constabulary about Draffut, and the Swords.”

  “The constabulary? I talked with Haakon, and some officer, Cheng Ho. They’re planning to move against the castle?”

  Mark nodded. “With Draffut’s help. Lady Yambu, a thousand thanks for your efforts on my behalf. Zoltan has told me of them.”

  The lady smiled remotely. “They were efforts well invested, I should say.”

  Ben sighed, feeling the relief of being able to hand over responsibility as well as that of seeing the Prince alive and well. “What do we do now?” he asked his leader.

  Mark looked around at the confining walls, and up toward the cleverly constructed niche where Ninazu and the Sword-bearer had disappeared. He said: “We can’t take the boat out into the lake now. It’s too light, and they’d kill us from the walls when we came out. So we find a place, somewhat less inconspicuous than this one, in which to spend the day. Honan-Fu was able to give me a hint or two.”

  * * *

  As the first light of morning began to creep into the narrow passage where Ninazu and Arnfinn had spent much of the night, the lady stirred, then jumped to her feet to look out of the window. Arnfinn, straightening his stiffened limbs to stand beside her, was in time to see the Ancient Master returning from the mainland on his griffin. The winged creature landed a hundred meters away, atop the one tower of the castle that was even taller than the one from which they watched.

  Ninazu stared at this aerial apparition in amazement. When it had vanished into the aerie she turned to look at Arnfinn, and some of her sudden tension left her again.

  “I understand,” she said. “That was a deception, of course. A magical counterfeit of yourself, a phantom launched so that others would believe that you had left the castle, while all the time you really were with me.” And she took him trustingly by the arm.

  Arnfinn drew in a deep breath. “Of course,” he said. Then something made him turn his head. There was no danger to be seen in the half-light of earliest dawn. There was nothing alarming to be heard. But something was certainly wrong.

  “What is it?” he muttered. “I feel sick.”

  The lady looked pale, and her eyes were closed. “It is only demons,” she murmured. “As my lord knows very well.”

  “Demons.” Arnfinn swallowed. “Where?”

  Ninazu did not answer. She was leaning on the stone sill of the narrow window again, gazing out. The sky was now as clear and innocent as it could be at dawn.

  Fiercely Arnfinn determined that, no matter what, he was not going to be incapacitated by these queasy sensations that seemed to come from nowhere. Nor was he going to waste any more time if he could help it. Looking about him, he took note that the passage going on above them was no longer a well of total darkness. Light, very faint and indirect daylight, was coming into it from somewhere higher up. Now Arnfinn could see that after a few more steps the passage turned inward in a sharp bend. These walls were not thick enough to accommodate much turning. A room of some kind, with windows, must be just ahead.

  Arnfinn drew a deep breath. “Of course,” he repeated. “I am the lord of this castle. Now I am going on, into that room above us. Are you going to follow me?”

  * * *

  Before the morning’s sun had risen entirely above the cliffs that served as distant guardians of Lake Alkmaar’s eastern shores, the demonic presences summoned by the Ancient One had begun to manifest themselves more strongly in his vicinity.

  As yet the demons had not become physically visible, but they were making their presences known in their own way. A vague, inward sickness was spreading throughout the local human population, a malaise, a foreboding that descended on people with the power of physical illness. Only a few magicians, already inured to such evil, were immune to the effect.

  The demons here, like all their brethren scattered about the world, were very old, within a few years of the age of Draffut himself, as old as the changing of the world itself from Old to New. Not since that great changing of the world—or so said the magicians who claimed to know about such things—had any new demons been created. But despite the demons’ antiquity, some of them still had very little experience in the world of human affairs.

  On this morning the first physical manifestation of their presence took the form of a clouding of the atmosphere before the eyes of the Ancient One, who was standing atop the highest tower to watch their arrival. Soon, other human watchers in and near the castle were able to see something of them too.

  Then the leader of this demon-pack, whose name was Akbal, appeared more distinctly to the human who had summoned him, in the form of a smoky column that hung in the air close in front of the high tower.

  “Hail, Master Wood,” said a voice that issued from the faint, dark column. “I am surprised to see you in this time and place.” It was not a human voice, nor was it loud. The only man who could hear it was reminded, as he usually was on these occasions, of dead leaves being blown through loosely piled bones.

  “All times and places are mine now, Akbal,” the man replied. “How many others have come with you?”

  “There are five others, Master Wood.”

  The man sighed. If any other human beings had been with him atop the tower, close enough to hear that sound, they might have found it surprising that such evidence of commonplace humanity could issue from those lips, which had now resumed their reptilian form again. “It is a long time,” he said, “since any have called me by that name. A very long time indeed.”

  “Then by what title shall I know you, master? I know that Wood is not your true and secret name—”

  “It is quite good enough. Yes, it will do. Now, Akbal, to business. Are you strong?”

  “Indeed, Master Wood. I do not mean to boast, but I have grown considerably in strength since either you, or that accursed one I now see wading in the lake, has seen me last. I take it that he, the Accursed One, is the reason for this summoning.”

  “You gauge my purpose correctly, demon. Now attend me carefully, Akbal, and you others, also.”

  While the shadowy forms of five other demons hovered in the air nearby, their leader, Akbal, was given his instructions by their human master.

  The briefing did not occupy much time. When it was over, the demon professed to be pleased that he had been chosen to lead an attack on Draffut.

  Then Akbal and his cohort, drifting lower over the lake, moved out to several hundred meters’ distance from the castle, and the same distance from Draffut, whom they began to engage in a dialogue.

  The humans who were able to observe this confrontation from the islands, or from the mainland, could not hear most of what was said. Only the magician who had called up the demons was able to hear most of their talk, by means of magic.

/>   But all of the humans who watched could see how one of the lesser demons, perhaps stung by some taunt from Draffut, suddenly took on physical form—that of a giant, shark like fish—and in this shape went plunging from the air into the water.

  Before the water of the tremendous splash had fallen back, the great fish had darted to attack Draffut.

  Grabbing one of its jaws in each hand, Draffut lifted the hideous creature thrashing from the lake. The demon emitted a terrible and most unfishlike scream as its jaws, white shark-teeth showing, were stretched to the point of dislocation and beyond.

  The body of the fish steamed and seemed to dissolve in air as the demon shed as rapidly as possible the physical form that it had so recently assumed.

  * * *

  Honan-Fu and Zoltan, cowering together on the sandy shore of an islet near where Draffut was standing in the water, were doing what they could to shelter themselves from demonic observation. In Zoltan’s case this consisted of little more than keeping his eyes shut and attempting now and then to heap sand over his own body. Honan-Fu presumably had rather greater powers at his disposal, but judging from the urgency of his muttering he was little more sanguine about the results.

  The two, before the demons’ arrival, had already held brief conversation with some members of Honan-Fu’s old constabulary. The officer Cheng Ho, after talking briefly and privately with the Emperor, had dared to row himself out here during the night to talk to Draffut, and had been delighted to welcome his old lord Honan-Fu back to the land of the living. But Cheng Ho had been prudent enough to row away again before these demonic fireworks had started.

  Draffut now turned his head to the two men remaining with him, and observed their concern. The giant said calmly: “I should perhaps explain that my compulsion against hurting people does not extend to demons—indeed I would like nothing better than to destroy them completely. But the death of any demon is practically impossible to accomplish, unless one has access to its hidden life.”

  “Which, in this case,” gritted Zoltan between clenched teeth, “you do not have.”

  “Alas, that is true. Still, I am not helpless, and can defend myself effectively, as well as any companions who are careful to stay close to me.” Draffut turned away to survey the situation once again.

  By now the demon whose jaw had been nearly torn from its joints had melted back into insubstantiality. And it was still fleeing, deep now in aerial distance, and still howling with persistent pain.

  At the moment there appeared to be no other challengers ready to take its place.

  “Most of them,” Draffut confided quietly to his two human companions, “respect my powers too much. If they were willing to make a concerted effort they might destroy me, but they would be hurt in the process. Probably they would all be badly hurt. Courage is a virtue, as you know, my friends, and therefore demons have it not.”

  * * *

  Meanwhile the wizard Wood, high on his battlement, was thinking that the six demons as a group ought to be powerful enough to destroy the Lord of Beasts utterly—and yet they hung back, cowardly as usual, and would not accept the pain that would be necessary for them to accomplish his will.

  He vowed their punishment if they did not obey his orders; and they understood that it was no idle vow.

  So now Akbal, leader of the pack, drifted toward Draffut once more. Akbal alone of this group of demons had skirmished with Draffut in the past—in the far past, those old days when the New World was truly new. In those days the powers of Orcus and of Ardneh had moved across the earth. And now Akbal was minded to taunt the Lord of Beasts with his defeat in those days by the demon-lord called Zapranoth. Akbal hoped by this means to encourage his fellows, so that they would be persuaded to rush in a group to the attack whether he went with them or not.

  “And remember, dog-god,” the boaster concluded, “that we here around you now are stronger than our brother Zapranoth ever was!”

  “Around me? You do not stand around me. I see you all clustering together, as if for mutual protection. And I have no doubt that you are stronger liars than Zapranoth was, and that is saying a great deal. But do not forget, while you are boasting of your strength, that I am still here, while Zapranoth the Liar is long dead.”

  At that reply the insubstantial forms that danced above the water all hissed and steamed and rumbled in their rage. Akbal screamed: “But you are unable to touch our lives, o dog of gods and god of dogs! For we have them all hidden safely. And this time there will be no little human being coming with a spell to save you!”

  “Here I am, if you care to attack me. As for human beings, little or great, perhaps you have something to learn of them as well.”

  This reply so incited the anger of Akbal that, forgetting his caution and his clever plans alike, he too dared to take on solid form alone and try the strength of Draffut. Plunging into the water, the demon strode against him in the shape of an armored man as tall as Draffut was. Chest-deep he waded toward the Lord of Beasts, amid the billows of the morning mist now rising from the lake.

  The two grappled. But still the ancient power that had made Draffut what he was endured in him, the power of that other lake, the Lake of Life, older by far even than Wood and his magic, as old perhaps as the Great Worm Yilgarn. And the demon Akbal, rage and struggle as he might, was unable to withstand him.

  With a last desperate effort the demon managed to twist away. He lunged into a retreat, half-drowning himself before he could completely shed the material body he had adopted for the trial.

  The Beastlord roared with laughter at the sight. “And you call yourself stronger than Zapranoth? Only in lies and malice, it may be.”

  And now the entire squadron of angry demons gathered in conference, each trying to convince the others that they ought to hurl themselves in a group against Draffut and overwhelm him. But each demon’s fear of him was too strong; and it was with relief that they heard the voice of their human master, summoning them back to the castle. Rather would they face Wood’s punishment than Draffut now.

  * * *

  Prince Mark, who with Ben and Lady Yambu had been peering over the top of the low wall that separated the grotto from the adjoining courtyard, watching the demons, suddenly sprang to the top of the wall as the demons again clouded the air almost directly overhead. “In the Emperor’s name,” Mark shouted to the demons, “I send you far!”

  Ben, who knew the Prince and his powers, had been more than half anticipating some such action. But Yambu cried out in surprise. Her cry was echoed by a whistle from above, deafeningly shrill, which stirred the clouded air above the castle. And then another whistle sounded, like the first but slightly different in its pitch; and then another and another. Louder and louder rose the chorus, at last becoming a mad shriek that seemed to split the sky before it was transformed into a lower, polyphonic howling. This last sound was as filled with fear and rage as any human outcry might have been.

  And then in turn the howling faded. And with its fading there diminished also the cloudiness of the morning air, and the sense of sickness that had afflicted almost everyone. The sound of the demonic voices faded rapidly at first, and then more slowly, and more slowly still, so that no human being who heard it was ever quite sure that it had really come to an end.

  But whether or not the sound of their departure had ever ended finally, the whole collection of demonic presences that had befouled the air above the castle were now indubitably gone.

  * * *

  Wood, who was still standing with Shieldbreaker in hand upon his highest battlement, had never expected anything like this. He did not see Mark jump up to give the order—the courtyard and grotto were out of his direct line of sight—but he heard the man’s voice raised in the shouted command that sent the demons scattering.

  He had heard almost nothing of the Prince’s voice before, and he did not recognize it now. But again there leaped into his mind the stories his advisers, Amintor in particular, had told him about Mark. N
ever had Wood really believed that Prince Mark possessed such power over demons, but he would certainly have raised the subject in his planned interrogations of the prisoner.

  Wood for the moment could only wonder whether Mark was in fact his prisoner still.

  And if conceivably Mark was free, what then of Honan-Fu?

  The Ancient One determined to investigate, and quickly. But now, with the morning mist beginning to blow away, and the sun coming into its full powers, Wood saw that Draffut was deliberately approaching the castle. Coming closer in full sunlight, the shaggy head and shoulders of the wading giant loomed above the last tendrils of the fading mist. An impressive figure, certainly, but small seen from this height. In fact it seemed to Wood that the God of Beasts was somewhat diminished from the creature he had been thousands of years ago.

  Using a touch of magic to amplify his voice, Wood shouted out a taunt to that effect.

  Draffut heard him, and paused to look up toward him. The Lord of Beasts needed no magic to amplify his voice when he chose to use it at something like full power.

  “Whatever the centuries may have done to me, small man, I think they have done worse to you. For you are sadly changed.”

  “Changed? Yes, you animal, changed indeed! But stronger now, I assure you, than ever I was then!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Starting the long climb down from the griffin’s aerie where he had been standing as he watched his demons routed, the Ancient Master took note again of the absence of small flyers, and reminded himself grimly that for the time being at least he was going to have to rely upon human eyes and ears, stationed in these high towers and elsewhere, to gather intelligence about what was happening on the lake and along its shores. He would of course use magical methods of observation when they seemed appropriate. And if a desperate need arose he could always mount his griffin again and ride out to see for himself.