Lyndon Hardy - Secret Of The Sixth Magic

"Have him release me." Melizar coughed as they settled to the ground. "A moment of heat will not destroy you. For months, you have been peacefully resting. It is only fair that you should carry some of the hardships as well."

The manipulant motioned with his arms and then collapsed to the ground as the djinn released its grip. Melizar momentarily staggered, but quickly regained his balance and drew himself to full height. He looked at the cowering sprite that had moved away from Delia and then pointed at Jemidon.

"In the grotto, at the pass, and now even one of my manipulant's sprites you have subvened," he said quietly. "Your persistence begins to mark you as a captive of some quality. Perhaps I judged too quickly in placing you in the pit. Your marrow should touch the lips of no less than the first among the pilots."

Jemidon grabbed Delia and closed his fist defiantly. "Numb us again if you will," he heard himself say. "Somehow, we shall escape as we did before."

"Apparently the torpordust is insufficient for one such as you," Melizar said. "That you have already demonstrated." He waved his cloaked arm through the air. "But now there are only alchemy and wizardry left. I will meet this so-called archmage of yours, and then the victory will be complete. You will be the first I will savor when I have gained control of them all. In the meantime, I will place you where I can be more sure you will stay."

Melizar kicked the manipulant huddled at his side. "Send them away. Back whence we came."

Jemidon tensed as the figure on the ground somehow managed to start a small fire from implements tucked into the waist of his loincloth. He tried to ignore the sense of helplessness that welled up within him. He faced no less than a long-tailed djinn that could slice him in two with the snap of its claws. No mortal who was not its master could stand against one. There was no point in even trying to resist. With round eyes, he watched the demon step forward and spread its blood-red wings. As its arms closed around him and Delia, the smell of burning sulfur made him gag.

"Elsewhere," he heard Melizar's muffled command. "Send them through the flames to elsewhere. Let him see if he can fare in my domain as well as I have in his."

JEMIDON could not judge the passage of time. There was a moment of disorientation and then he heard sharp cries of surprise. The wings of the djinn unfurled. As quickly as it had engulfed them, the demon stepped back into the flame and vanished.

A blast of numbing cold air ripped at Jemidon's uncovered hands and eyes. A sense of weightlessness rose from his stomach; his feet slowly left the ground. He looked up and blinked. He was surrounded by a vast expanse of reddish sky, not the robust oranges of sunset reflected in clouds, but a soft color that washed from horizon to horizon, full of a diffuse light for which no source could be seen. In the far distance, spanning completely across the ruddy glow, were dim hints of long, straight lines, a trellis of triangles like the facets of a gem.

Where were they? It was a scene that could not possibly exist in the experience of man. Everything was alien-the colors, the smell of the air, and the sound of the whistling wind. The shock hammered at Jemidon's senses and froze him in place, a mute statue totally without comprehension of what he saw.

A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. He was thrust into a shallow pit carved from solid rock and saw Delia pushed to his side. Long, slender fingers pointed to small indentations in the walls, and he understood what to do. Gripping tightly with his hands and feet, he prevented himself from floating away.

For the longest time, Jemidon remained huddled in the pit, pressing against Delia to share her warmth and feeling the wind whip over his back. He kept his eyes screwed shut, all muscles tensed to lock him into position, not wanting to move, trying to will away what he had seen as part of a flawed glamour. But the thought of what really must have happened bubbled in his mind, gathering strength and dripping with desolation and helplessness.

Finally Jemidon had to be sure. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and looked about. He saw about a dozen figures, dressed only in loincloths like Melizar's manipulants, huddling in depressions similar to his own. They were arrayed in a circle about a deeper pit that contained the last flickers of the fire, a complex linkage of mirrors, and a flat tablelike stone with strange glyphs marked around the periphery.

Like Melizar's manipulants! His sagging spirits plummeted with the thought. Like Melizar himself! Here the beings appeared to move about in comfort, to be the norm. He and Delia were the exceptions, the outcasts trapped far away from home. The strange one indeed had made good his threat.

"Where are we?" Delia came to life at his side. "Is this the realm of demons, the world behind the flames?"

Jemidon looked to the horizon. They seemed to be on the top of a rocky mound; the terrain fell away in all directions. But the proportions were all wrong. There was nothing in the distance beyond the curve of the hill, no plain stretching away or other mountains, only reddish sky and the distant lines.

"It is totally unlike what the wizards have recorded in the sagas," Jemidon said. "But I fear that, for us, it will make little difference."

Jemidon looked again at the men clustered about them. They talked in a soft chittering and ignored him completely. In the pit with the tablestone, one obviously older than the rest and cloaked in gray spoke in hoarse whispers, gesturing commands. His sleek black hair had turned pale, and deep wrinkles furrowed a caved-in face. Pus ran from one half-closed eye. With a gnarled hand, he idly fingered the bead at one of the vertices of a lattice. It was like Melizar's, although it was far less complex.

Beyond the large pit stood a scaffolding and next to it a line of crudely built wagons, wheels of solid wood and tongues with handholds rather than yokes. Behind them were several hoists, complicated constructions of levers, pulleys, and slings. Shovels and coarse woven sacks were piled everywhere, battened down under tightly stretched nets.

Farther to the right, at the end of what might be a safety rope, looped through a series of metal eyes, was a large indentation in the rock. When Jemidon craned his neck, he could see steps leading down into an interior and the hint of torchlight casting dull shadows on the roughly hewn granite. Except for these features, all else was bare rock, a gently curving expanse with sharp ridges hammered and polished away, the texture of the sea frozen in sculpture's stone.

The old one gestured dramatically at the horizon. Jemidon turned his head and saw a new line of hills where there had been none before. And as he watched, the crest-line grew taller and extended farther to both sides. The undulations of the peaks were ripples on a more gentle curve that bowed up into the sky. For a moment Jemidon was puzzled by what he was seeing, but in a few seconds more, the rising ground began to fill his view. In a flash he understood where he was. They were riding a boulder, a large one to be sure, over a thousand feet in diameter from what he could see, but no more than a mere hunk of rock, slowly rotating and hurtling toward the ground.

Jemidon realized dimly that he should have some reaction to the impending collision, at least a sudden flash of anxiety from the primitive fear of falling, but he felt instead only the huge weight of his increasing despair. Almost dispassionately, he saw the growing details of ragged peaks and scarred valleys as they closed. Here and there were small craters, and in other places long slashes gouged the surface. He looked back at the men. Calmly they went about their tasks, seemingly oblivious to the danger of a collision. Two sighted the approaching body through a telescope and sextant, while another moved small markers around the edge of the tablestone in response to what they called out. A fourth reached from his pit and placed two pale blue stones onto the tabletop, each the size of a fist. Through his good eye, the old one squinted up at the approaching sphere. He glanced at the markers the others adjusted around the periphery of the stone and nodded. Reaching into his loincloth, he removed a small pyramid, each side covered with variously colored triangles much like Melizar's cube.