Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

He didn’t wait for Terril’s response but went quickly on, “Can you tell us how it’s done?”

Flayh’s eyes lidded slightly, and he gazed contemptuously at Joooms.

“Of course.” Joooms nodded. “Trade secrets. But since your shaping is so demonstrably superior to ours, can’t you release us from your service? Your victory is assured.”

“Patience, Joooms,” Flayh said. “Your children aren’t far, and they aren’t suffering. A few more days and, as you say, the victory will be assured. But it would make me nervous to think either of you were out there unattached, so to speak. Besides, I need your counsel. You’ve both battled Pelmen and Mar-Yilot, and I want to draw upon your experience.”

Joooms chuckled. “I’ll be little help to you there. While I’ve successfully eluded them both, I’ve never defeated either of them.” The dark man frowned sharply and raised his voice. “Come, Lord Flayh, speak frankly! You know as well as we that what you’ve just done is impossible! The pair you battle are the best, and by their pairing are more frightful than any shaper force I ever faced, but surely they tremble before you, who can be anywhere you will!”

“Not anywhere. Not yet,” Flayh muttered. “The range of my movement is small yet. But it should be sufficient, you think?”

“Without question,” Joooms snorted.

Flayh looked at Terril. “And you? You agree?”

“My Lord Flayh,” Terril answered wearily, “you know that I would surrender without a fight.”

“Of course,” Flayh snorted. “You already did. But Pelmen did not. Nor did Mar-Yilot. What news, man! What can I expect?”

Terril took a deep breath. “Syth has marched to Tuckad, where he gathers his armies. The son of Dorlyth rides with him. Mar-Yilot lingers in Sythia to cover her lover, and I doubt she’ll venture anything save that. Your spell upon Syth terrified her.”

“Yet that spell didn’t hold. Syth raises an army against me! What about this woman with the healing touch?”

“You know about that?”

“Naturally I know!” Flayh barked. “Did you think yourself my only pair of eyes in the north? Where is she? If she travels with Syth, then magical attacks upon him would be useless, freeing Mar-Yilot to work her mischief! Speak!”

“She’s gone!” Terril blurted out. “She left with Pelmen on some strange quest over a week ago!”

“What quest?” Flayh asked.

Terril trembled. “I could never obtain the details.”

Flayh gazed at him a moment, somewhat disinterestedly, rather as a man might regard a chicken he’s about to behead. “Where were they going?” he asked casually. “Or did you miss that as well?”

“I… don’t know.”

Flayh smiled slightly. “I know where Pelmen is. He travels with an army from Chaomonous that passed through Dragonsgate three days ago.”

“With Queen Bronwynn?” Terril asked earnestly. “It’s her army Syth plans to join!”

“Which means?” Flayh inquired in bored tones.

’That Pelmen and this witch healer will be together again with Syth…”

“Freeing Mar-Yilot to act.” Flayh grunted. “And I believe you’ve told me something of this young queen, as well?”

“She’s a shaper,” Terril murmured, recalling the rolling inferno that ended his dream of dominating Chaomonous.

Flayh turned to the dark wizard. “You see, Joooms, why I need you. I have potentially three shapers aligned against me, two certainly. And while I may have superior power, I lack tactical training. I fear nothing from these armies. The tugoliths will demolish them on the plain. Should any warriors succeed by chance in eluding the beasts and getting up the Down Road, they’ll face King Pahd and the rather colorful assemblage that continues to muster in the city—the cream of the Mar, I’m told?” He raised an inquiring eyebrow, and Joooms nodded:

“There are many good warriors among Pahd’s supporters.”

“Fine. Certainly no one could penetrate that cordon to face

my own castle guard and their hideous leader. Excepting, of course, a shaper. A shaper could neutralize my war beasts, perhaps even neutralize Pahd’s army. We can’t allow that to happen, Joooms. If that happens, I’m afraid your children will suffer. And we don’t want that.”

Joooms’s brown eyes were expressionless—which in fact

expressed a great deal. “No, Lord Flayh. We would not.”

“Very well then. Suppose you tell me what I may expect?”

Joooms and Terril exchanged a quick look of mutual dismay. How could they teach a powerful novice to free his imagination?

Joooms took a deep breath, but never got any farther. He was interrupted by a horrible sound that made all of them slam their hands over their ears and shut their eyes. It was like the baying of thousands of dogs. When it ceased at last and Joooms and Terril opened their eyes, Flayh had disappeared.

“What do you do next?” Serphimera asked.

“I don’t know,” Pelmen replied honestly. He had arranged the six pyramids in a hexagram on the cavern floor and now stepped back to survey them. Serphimera pulled her robe more tightly around her shoulders and shivered. The freezing wind only blew a little colder outside.

“You have no idea where to begin?”

“None.” The word boomed through the cavern more loudly than he’d intended. Had he been more attentive to his wife, he might have noticed how this clipped utterance added to her chill. His attention remained fixed on the diamonds before him, however, as he sat quietly and waited.

Serphimera watched his face. She saw the intensity, the resolve in his clenched jaw, and the confident anticipation glittering in his eyes. While he didn’t know the secret that would fuse these fragments into a single magnificent gem, he knew far more than had Sheth, that wondrous wizard of times past. He knew he couldn’t do this by his own power and that he didn’t need to try. Sheth’s contribution was lodged within them, evidenced by their strange blue radiance. There was no need now for Pelmen’s shaper skill—a good thing, since he’d always been a user of the shaper’s craft, not a scholar of it. His contribution had nothing to do with magic. Rather, he was to furnish the one element the weapon had lacked when first it had been formed. Pelmen provided the faith.

He couldn’t even say for sure what faith was. An attitude of mind? A method of interpreting events that saw patterns in random occurrences? A type of magic all its own? A gift? He favored the last view himself, believing that the gift of believing had been disclosed to him here on this very mountain by that Power who unified all things. He hadn’t sought it—it had come unbidden. Yet it was there within him, irrefutably a part of him. He believed. And that belief had robbed him of his freedom, ripped away some measure of his own identity—and had given in their place the exhilaration of purpose.

His was not a false faith, some type of hypnosis, self-induced to escape the anxiety of living in an imperfect world. He had experienced the Power flooding through him and washing him clean as it rushed on to accomplish its own purposes through him. At the same time, his relationship with this mighty One remained a faith, and not a knowledge. Those moments of peak intensity, when he knew he was not the shaper but the one being shaped, fled swiftly. And there remained too many feathery brushes with the icy tendrils of doubt. It was not knowledge, but a faith—based in his own experience. Pelmen could do many things, but all were meaningless in contrast to his exercising of this gift. Pelmen’s faith was a gateway. As Serphimera watched, it opened.

One moment he was Pelmen. The next he was something far, far more. The change dropped him to his knees, and he rolled back onto his heels, beaming with elation. Serphimera knew the feeling well. She also knew the sense of isolation it produced. She felt lonely, separated from her love by that very thing which linked them together. But Serphimera bore no jealousy. After all, she possessed a faith of her own.