Robert Hughes - The Wizard in Waiting

He started for his room.

His pace increased with each step he took toward the object. By the time he reached his inner chamber he was running, and he had to stop to catch his breath. Then, just as he had done time and again throughout that day, he fell to his knees and lifted the pyramid out of its place of hiding. He stripped its protective bag away and fondled it again, amazed that he actually possessed such a wondrous object. He sat on the bed and stared into it for a moment, wishing he hadn’t promised to show it to the others. As he thought of excuses for not bringing it out after all, it came alive in his hands. He stared…

It’s under the bed. “And Jagd is…”

On the roof with the birds. “You’ll warn me—”

Yes.

Pelmen turned to Bronwynn and put a finger to his lips, then nodded.

She turned the knob that opened the panel to Jagd’s room, and Pelmen slipped inside. He closed the hatch behind him, as they’d agreed, and knocked one of the purple cloaks from its peg to allow her to watch him while she remained hidden. Then he walked to the bed and knelt beside it. “Under here?”

That’s right.

Pelmen leaned over and looked. There was the case. He tugged it out, unlatched it, and found the bag inside. He fetched it out quickly and opened it up to be sure it was the right thing.

Don’t! screamed the House, but it was too late. Pelmen stared into Flayh’s face.

“You!” Pelmen shouted in surprise.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Flayh squinted his eyes and chanted an incantation. It appeared to both Pelmen and Tahli-Damen that the bald wizard’s eyes filled the crystal completely. Pelmen tossed up a hand to catch the blow and deflect it, but Tahli-Damen had no such power.

The young merchant found his eyes locked into the magic crystal, helpless even to scream.

Stop! roared the Imperial House of Chaomonous, in agony. Through its pain, it could hear the echo of its own scream in that of a distant palace:

Agony! cried the High Fortress of Ngandib, but Flayh ignored its ravings. He muttered another incantation and peered into the faces of Tahli-Damen and a curiously powerful clown.

“You fear me!” Flayh ordered, expecting instant submission from these two unexpected visitors.

Tahli-Damen would have cried out, “Yes!” if he’d been able, but his vocal cords seemed frozen by an abject, all-consuming dread. The eyes that had locked onto his sucked dry the wellspring of his courage.

“No!” Pelmen reacted, and he bent his energies to the struggle.

Suddenly two pairs of eyes filled the object Tahli-Damen held, the second more terrible than the first. Both pierced completely through him. The young merchant felt sure he was bleeding from every orifice of his body, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away to check.

With the screams of his own castle echoing through his mind, Flayh shouted, “Who are you?” at the clownish eyes that filled his vision.

“You know me, Flayh,” Pelmen murmured quietly. To Flayh and Tahli-Damen, his words pierced like a shout. “Yield now, before I kill you both.”

Stop! Please! anguished the Imperial House of Chaomonous, and Pelmen was dimly aware of the renewed chorus of bells throughout the hallways, and of pounding feet outside in the corridor. He was helpless to stop the conflict now. He could only end it by winning it.

Then Pelmen recoiled from the crystal, squinting in revulsion. The bared fangs of a savage dog seemed to lunge out of it for his face.

Those jaws snapped on his neck, but his neck was suddenly gone, replaced by the widespread beak of a screaming falcon. The dog jerked away, terrified by the razorlike talons it saw diving for its eyes.

Those claws hooked flesh, and sliced six long red gashes into the dog’s muzzle. The beast howled.

Tahli-Damen reeled. A dog had nearly severed his neck, only to be knocked aside by a falcon which slashed its face. Yet the merchant’s eyes remained fixed on the surface of the glass. He was unaware of the cries of his woman, who called to him from the stairway.

The Imperial House ground its stones together. It would have thrown itself asunder, had it been able, but the energy necessary to do so was aJl being focused through a tiny sliver of crystal in its heart.

Powerless, it bellowed its agony.

Bronwynn cowered in her hiding place. When the bells began through the castle she’d jerked away from her eyehole, feeling sure they had something to do with her. Someone had discovered her presence, and had called for a general search. Or was it that Admon Faye had returned and, with Pelmen occupied, had broken out of the lower level into the castle? As they continued, she stood up and looked into Jagd’s room again. Her mouth fell open in shock Pelmen was a falcon.

The dog disappeared as quickly as it came, and Flayh newly marked with six red stripes on his cheek breathed, “Pelmen!”

Once again the clown peered up at him out of the crystal. “That’s right, Flayh. Yield yourself and end this madness.”

Flayh grunted with effort, and Pelmen gasped and threw up his hands to shield his face. A ball of yellow flame hurtled up at him out of the pyramid.

“Return,” he cried, and the ball bounced off his hands and back into the object. Then, as he closed his eyes, it engulfed the pyramid in flames; under the pressure of both shapers, it exploded with a silent flash into a blazing ball ten times its original size. Then it was gone, and the pyramids suddenly went cold.

Wayleeth dashed into her lover’s room to find him lying on their bed, hugging the pyramid to him and weeping aloud. “Why, darling, what’s the matter? Did something we say upset ” She stopped. Tahli-Damen opened his eyes to Stare up at her, and she staggered away in horror.

There were no pupils, no irises, no whiles just a solid background of pale, powder blue.

“Wayleeth,” he sobbed, as he gazed up toward her face. “Wayleeth? Are you there?”

“Yes,” she finally managed to choke out. “I’m standing right in front of you.”

“You… are?” He stared sightlessly into space a minute, then cleared his throat. “Wayleeth,” he gasped. “Flayh’s had his vengeance at last.”

“My darling,” she sobbed, wrapping her arms around him to get away from the ghastly blue tint of his eyeballs.

“I stole a vision-maker from a wizard .. , and the wizard stole my eyes.”

Flayh reeled away from the table, and lurched toward a drawer in one of his several desks. He jerked it open to pull out a mirror, and examined himself in it. The sight dragged a strangled moan from his lips.

Across his cheeks were the six red gashes hideous, to be sure, but clearly not as disfiguring as the other new feature. He looked at the back of his hands, and groaned in understanding. He’d managed to get them to his face in time to prevent blindness, but the backs of them had been stained a light blue by the flash. He looked back at the mirror. Two hand prints had been tattooed onto his face. That skin protected by the shield of his hands was the same milky-white as the rest of his body. But that part exposed to the blast now wore the same light blue tint as his hands, all the way up to the top of his bald skull.

No one can say you’re not unique, said the High Fortress of Ngandib, and windy laughter whirled through the room. “Flayh gave it cause to regret that, long into the night.

Bronwynn had ducked when Pelmen threw up his hands and had missed the flash. When she looked again, he was lying prone on the floor, unmoving. She gave the knob a savage twist and bolted out to look at him. Then she grabbed up the pyramid, stuffed it into its bag, and scram bled back to her corridor. A moment later she burst in on Rosha, who’d been waiting impatiently by the moveable panel.