Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

Flayh had returned to casting his net.

“Well,” Pezi told himself, “It’s good to see where I stand.” Then he straightened up to his full height for the benefit of his tugoliths and waddled back to the head of the line.

Chimolitha looked at him stoicly. “What did you say?” she asked.

Pezi puffed out his chest. “I told him to mind his own business and go back to sleep. Let me up.”

Chimolitha nodded and lowered her head so he could climb back up behind her horn. Then she started forward, moving toward the Westmouth and Ngandib-Mar. The pack fell in behind. Even Thuganlitha seemed docile.

“Man?” Chimolitha said after a moment.

“Yes?” Pezi asked, feeling rather regal.

“It’s a later time.”

“What? What of it?” Pezi frowned.

“You yell a lot,” the tugolith intoned, and Pezi groaned inwardly. He now remembered their earlier conversation. Chimolitha never forgot anything.

Pezi and his giant beasts distracted Flayh only momentarily. The sorcerer immediately returned his attention to creating that wall of magic netting that stretched across the Riverline to the north. He felt certain that the magical thieves who had robbed his castle would be riding into it any minute.

It wasn’t that the crystal object was so precious. With the loss or theft of the other two, the pyramids themselves had become useless to him. Indeed, he was glad to be rid of them, in a way. They held a terrible fascination for the demonic dogs he had enfleshed to invade Lamath, and the presence of the dogs made him uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he was enraged to think something had been stolen from his own fortress and he’d been powerless to stop it.

Flayh had always been a merchant. While he’d spent decades wrestling with governments and dueling other merchant houses, those things had always been just business. But to a merchant, no enemy could be more hateful than a thief. Flayh felt violated. The sanctity of his impregnable tower had been defiled.

And what infuriated him most was that he’d helped the rodents succeed! His living castle, his hired killers—even his own magical abilities, had failed him in his moment of triumph. It would not happen again. Wrapped in the darkness of his black-draped chamber, he held his net in place and meditated upon the alliance that had been made against him.

Mar-Yilot had linked with Pelmen. There could be no other explanation. Terril he already controlled.

Joooms had trembled before him and had sworn not to interfere; like a cunning banker, Flayh had extracted certain securities Joooms could never disregard. Mast had been so frightened he’d taken his altershape and fled. The frog was now hibernating under a layer of ice at the bottom of a North Fir pond.

Of the great shapers of legend, only Pelmen and Mar-Yilot remained untamed. If the Autumn Lady had at last learned the truth, then she indeed had cause to hate him. Mar-Yilot was no fool.

Despite her obsessive mistrust of Pelmen, she would reason

her way to the truth eventually.

Flayh assumed she already had done so. That explained how Pelmen and the troublesome young son of Dorlyth had escaped the plateau. But if so, then he knew where they were headed. The woman was devoted to her lover and would not stay away from his sickbed for long. Were she and Pelmen traveling alone, they would doubtless fly, but they had this Rosha along. He’d been trouble for Flayh—now he would be trouble for his powerful benefactors, for they would be forced to ride northward under the cover of a magical cloak. That’s why he’d woven his net carefully across the Riverline. Let that spell of invisibility touch it, and they were trapped.

As the day wore on, however, Flayh began to doubt. Not a tremor of shaping stirred his trap. Was it possible? Had they slipped through when he’d been busy with Pezi? He began to curse his nephew under his breath. Within moments his curses were full-throated cries of rage.

He felt enormous frustration at his own inexperience. He was far more powerful than the two shapers who fled his plateau, but they had been at this business for years. Like aged foxes pursued by an excellent but untried hunting hound, their seasoned guile compensated for their overmatched abilities. It galled him bitterly, but Flayh conceded at last that they had outsmarted him. He’d been too obvious in his thinking. They’d be fools to return immediately to their armies. Surely they realized that Flayh’s spies had already spotted the uncloaked troop concentrations on Sythia Isle and in the glade of mod Carl. Should a cloak suddenly close again around one of those forces, they would be announcing their whereabouts as clearly as if they shouted it. No. They were in hiding. They could be anywhere!

With a vengeful bellow, Flayh jerked in his net and cast it randomly across the breadth of the Mar. The net was a type of penetration spell. It yielded to Flayh no visual image of the places it touched, nor was his image seen there, as with Mar-Yilot’s dream-search. Its chief value was that it detected magic. It could pinpoint any act of shaping in the wide area it touched; should it brush some rival wizard in altershape, it would close as relentlessly as any net of cord upon a fish. The spellcaster could then draw the captured shaper to himself. With the desperation of a luckless fisherman, Flayh cast his invisible snare—and caught something.

He couldn’t tell who it was, but he began working feverishly to pull the trapped shaper toward him. The afternoon disappeared into night, but Flayh took no notice. The tray of food that was brought to his door was later removed untouched. He concentrated on reeling in the trapped wizard, and as the time passed his spirits soared, for he could tell by the direction and speed of his prisoner’s approach that this shaper could only be traveling through the air. Morning dawned as he pulled his captive the last few yards toward the tower. Triumphantly, he flung aside a drape to see which one he’d caught.

Flayh blinked, then stared, then swore in disgust. He’d expended all that effort to capture Terril, the purple bug! With a wave of his hand he jerked the unfortunate insect inside and closed the curtain. “Well, Terril, what a surprise,” he snarled acidly. “Want to take your human form? Not a chance!” The vindictive shaper left Terril bound in the magical net as he walked to the door and threw it open. “Slave! Bring me a bottle!” Then he walked back to his helplessly hovering captive.

Flayh smiled perversely. “Now, why are you here? So proud of your victory you came to report it in person? But wait—if you had a victory to report, you’d do it from the throne of Chaomonous. What am I to gather, then? That you have— shall we say—miscalculated? That you’ve failed? But why else would you be buzzing around Ngandib-Mar in your silly little violet armor? Never mind, Terril, I’ll hear the story soon enough, I’m sure. Slave! Where is that bottle?” A young boy raced into the room, holding a bottle before him. Flayh took it, turned it over in his hands, and muttered, “This will do.” The slave disappeared in great haste. Flayh held up the bottle so that Terril could see it.

“I’m going to put you inside this, Terril. Oh, you could change shapes and break the bottle, of course, but I think perhaps I’ll lock the bottle inside a metal strong box. Would that discourage you, do you think, from trying to shift forms? Why, if you tried, I do believe you’d suffocate. But that’s up to you. My only concern is that you suffer.” Flayh uncorked the bottle. “Get inside it.”

Terril had no choice. Soon the bug was corked up and locked away, and Flayh returned his attention to searching for the two

thieves. “Too late now,” he muttered. “They’re safely hidden. Where? Sythia Isle? Carlog? Mod Carl’s glade?” Flayh sat down in a chair and opened his mind to the search. “They’ll make a mistake,” he murmured. “And I’ll be waiting.”