Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

Admon Faye leaned his head back and laughed, long and loud. Then he turned to smirk at Pezi.

Pezi gasped and shouted, “You wouldn’t dare!”

“I wouldn’t?” Admon Faye asked coldly, and Pezi trembled at his poor choice of words. Everyone knew Admon Faye would dare anything. The slaver turned and looked back down at the curious, upturned faces of the tugoliths. “It’s tempting, Pezi, but I’ll wait. You want meat, my friend? I’ll send you some meat.” He walked away to give the order.

The slave pit was overcrowded anyway.

Frost formed high on the windows. It was cold outside, but the air was clear, and the sunlight bouncing off the snow-clad hills made them far too bright for the eyes. Rosha drank from a steaming cup and gazed beyond them at the rich blue of the sky. Syth sat beside him, his feet propped on a short table, a heavy book in his hands. There was no sound in the room save the crackling logs in the fireplace and the occasional whisper of the turning of a page.

“Where are they, do you think?” Rosha murmured.

Syth looked up from his reading, did some silent calculations, and said, “North of Wina’s eastern castle.

I hope.” His eyes dropped back to the page.

“I should have gone with them.”

Syth glanced back up at Rosha’s face, then closed his volume and laid it on the table beside his feet.

“Why?” he challenged.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t. It made absolute sense for you to remain, none at all for you to go with them. You were exhausted—”

“So was Pelmen.”

“—and in need of a healing Serphimera’s hands couldn’t provide.” Syth raised his eyebrows. “Pelmen’s wounds were physical, yours of a different variety.”

“What wounds?” Rosha grunted.

Syth gazed off at the distance himself and folded his hands

across his stomach. “It’s no shame for a warrior to admit pain. Especially not psychic pain. You’ve lost your father. You’re estranged from your lover. And, unless I miss my guess, you fear you’ve lost your nerve.”

“What do you mean!” Rosha growled, almost coming out of his seat.

“What I said.” Syth met Rosha’s eyes with a frank stare. Embarrassed, the young man looked away.

Then he seemed to melt backward into his chair, as if all the stiffness had suddenly gone out of his bones.

“How did you know?” he murmured.

“Given your recent experiences, how could you feel otherwise?” Syth asked. “All you’ve attempted since leaving Chaomonous has gone badly—or so you believe. You count yourself responsible for your father’s death and for the near death of your mentor. You found yourself lured into a magic trap and experienced the humiliation of discovering your own naivete. And then you were rescued by a woman.”

Syth smiled, more to himself than at Rosha, as if he found his recitation of Rosha’s difficulties privately amusing. In fact, he smiled at how nearly the young man’s circumstances matched his own. “Now I think I might have an insight some others may not have—perhaps not even your friend Pelmen. Then again, he may, knowing Serphimera. For you see, on more than one occasion, I’ve been rescued by a woman—a woman more powerful than myself. And such exploits just don’t sound manly when recounted around a campfire.” Syth now let his smile surface, and its warmth broke through the barrier of Rosha’s distrustful frown. “You left your woman to prove yourself a man in the Mar. Now she’s chasing you here, commanding a force the likes of which you could never muster. And you’ve found in addition to all of that that she can shape the powers.” Syth grinned. “That can’t help but make a man feel a bit inadequate.

Believe me, I know.”

Rosha nodded and half-smiled. Then he grimly studied his hands. Syth had touched a part of his trouble, but not all.

Now Syth leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head, gazing at the dark wooden beams that supported the ceiling. “But what’s really bothering you is the reality of failure.” Rosha made no response, so he continued, “We build such high opinions of ourselves. We believe we’re capable of anything. Who knows, maybe we are. But then the doubt sets in—and after that the dread.” Syth turned his head and stared at Rosha until the young man was forced to look at him. “I know a great deal about dread as well.”

“That was a spell!” Rosha protested.

“And yours isn’t?”

“If it is, no one’s cast it upon me but me.”

“Perhaps.” Syth nodded. “Then again, I can’t be sure anyone cast mine upon me but me, either.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Rosha grumbled. “You had a dread spell cast upon you by Flayh himself. And it didn’t hit just you—it froze a peasant family too!”

“You heard about that? By the way, they’re all right now. Serphimera apparently visited them too.”

Rosha nodded, barely interested. “But that still doesn’t explain why the spell worked. What gave it its force?”

Rosha frowned. “I don’t know. Magic.”

Syth nodded. “Powers. Shaped powers. And what could end it?” Rosha shrugged. “This one your friends call the Power. And me.”

“You?”

“Surely. I played a part in my own healing. I had to will myself to see past my own failure, past the loss in battle of so many men who’d trusted me, past the real possibility of Flayh’s ultimate victory in this struggle, and past the inevitability of death itself, which seems like some kind of personal failure to so many of us. I can fail, Rosha. So can you. Why should we live in fear of proving what we already know?”

Rosha frowned out the window. “Isn’t that admitting weakness?”

“Certainly.” Syth shrugged. “But it’s also an admission of fact. Our wives know it already. So do our friends. Nor does such an admission mean we have no strengths.” Syth turned his gaze on this island that was so precious to him, and his teeth clenched together. His eyes smoldered with a resolve that reminded Rosha of Dorlyth as he said, “Just because we’re outnumbered, outflanked, and probably outguessed as well, doesn’t mean we can’t give the dog a fight. And we will. We’ll find all the allies we can—Belra’s army, the Golden Throng, Pelmen’s blue-clad initiates—and somehow we’ll get into—”

He stopped suddenly, eyes on the window, a frown of concern on his face.

“What?” Rosha said, equally concerned, and he leaped up to gaze out the window himself.

“Not there,” Syth grunted. “There!” He wheeled around and pointed up toward one of the beams. He’d caught a reflection in the glass of the purple shell of a sugar-clawsp. “Mar-Yilot!” he shouted as he grabbed up his book and launched it at the insect. “Mar-Yilot, come now!”

The sorceress sprinted into the hall. Her golden eyes were wide as she shouted, “What is it!”

“There’s a clawsp in here!”

“Terril!” Mar-Yilot yelled without hesitation, and she hurled a ball of flame in the direction Syth pointed.

The clawsp was in the air by now, buzzing wildly around the room as the three of them pursued it. “Take your proper shape and do battle!” Mar-Yilot screamed, but the insect ignored her as it swooped from one side of the hall to the other. Syth had retrieved his book and now he threw it again. He’d aimed poorly, however. It missed the clawsp and shattered a window. Immediately the insect doubled back and out the broken pane. An instant later the butterfly sailed out behind it, and both were lost to the sight of the two earthbound warriors. They pressed their noses to the glass anyway. They saw nothing.

Several minutes later Mar-Yilot darted back in the broken window. She dropped to the carpet in her human shape, and Syth and Rosha waited as she caught her breath. She shook her head and frowned; words were unnecessary.