Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

'You speak too lightly of blood matters,' said Alish.

'If you don't tell him, others will,' said Hearst. 'Plenty know. Two survivors didn't run as fast as the others. Bits and pieces of them turned to stone. One died quickly; the other still lives. Prince Comedo keeps him as a toy.'

Both Hearst and Alish had seen that last living victim when Comedo put him on display. His skin was mostly grey; his hands had thickened to useless chunks of rock; one leg was paralyzed and the other had turned to stone below the knee. Stone lips kept his mouth forever open; his tongue licked round uneasily in the warm darkness within. One eye blinked; the other, together with most of the face, had turned to stone.

'The survivor,' said Phyphor, 'Will he live or die?'

'I don't know,' said Alish. 'I don't think he cares.'

'I think he envies the dead,' said Hearst.

'Look,' said Blackwood, 'There's water ahead.'

The rain had filled a dip in the ground where Heenmor's magic had turned the earth to stone. The water was dark, still and silent. They came to a halt by the sinister dark waters. Grey stone. Dark water. The sky above was turning grey. And no bird sang.

Blackwood coughed, loudly, and spat. The march had wearied him. These last few years, he had not felt as fit as he used to. Maybe it was the famine-hungry winters which had sapped his strength; it could hardly be old age.

'This,' said Garash, with satisfaction, 'is where we turn back.'

'We've come this far, we might as well go to the end,' said Alish, unbuckling his sword and wading in boldly until the water rose to his waist.

'Do you like it in there?' said Garash.

'Come on in,' said Alish. 'The water's wonderful. You're not afraid, are you?'

'I'm too old for children's hero-games,' said Garash, dismissing his challenge with contempt.

Alish saw he had lost this round. Nobody else cared to play fish, so Alish, putting a brave face on it, went on alone, raising his sword above his head as water rose to his neck. Ahead was a tree: dead, but made of wood, not stone. Reaching it, he scraped the bottom with the toe of his boot, stirring up mud. Investigating carefully with his feet, he found that stone gave way to mud within a circle about as wide as his outstretched arms. This was the area of safety when the magic was at work.

When Heenmor had used his death-stone, anyone bold enough to close with him could have killed him and survived within that circle of safety – if Heenmor's snake did not take revenge. Alish was satisfied. He had learnt something. He made his way back, toward the others.

'Well,' said Garash, 'did you enjoy yourself?'

'Yes,' said Alish, 'I feel refreshed.'

Emerging from the water dripping wet, he set off, leading the way at a cracking pace which soon had all but Hearst stumbling far behind him. Marching, Alish counted paces to determine the distance from the centre of safety to the outer fringes of the circle of death. Five hundred paces back the way they had come brought them to a place where several large trees lay in pieces; nearby lay a large rock. The shattered trees were half stone, half timber; the stone fell away easily from the wood when Alish kicked it.

He laid a fire, then Blackwood went to work with flint and steel and lit it; soon, for the first time in generations, warriors of Rovac were bedded down by the same camp fire as wizards from the Castle of Controlling Power.

Name: Miphon.

Mission: the quest to encompass Heenmor's death and recover whatever magic Heenmor stole from the Dry Pit.

Duties: officially, only to distract Heenmor's copper-strike snake in any confrontation; in practice, he has been donkey-master, cook, healer, translator and diplomat, and has already once had to intervene to keep Phyphor from beating Garash to death.

Appearance: as he is currently rolled up with Blackwood in a length of waterproof canvas – it is too cold to be coy – his appearance cannot be checked, but, when last seen, he proved himself a slender, youthful, green-eyed man sturdily dressed in wool and leathers.

Blackwood woke, untangled himself from canvas and from a stranger's warmth, and went to take a piss. The night was giving way to song-light, but no bird sang. His body was aching from the march of the day before, but he whistled as he gathered wood and conjured life from the ashes of the fire. He was happy. They would be returning to the castle today, and Mystrel would be waiting for him.

Blackwood was careless about the amount of noise he made, guessing that the two soldiers, Hearst and Alish, would sleep on regardless. And he didn't trouble his head about the wizards, as he had scant respect for pox doctors.

He smiled at the crackling fire, and the fire beamed back.

Miphon had not woken properly when Blackwood roused himself. He lay half-submerged in sleep, lubbery as a sodden old boot. He could hear the grumbling discord of the thoughts of a nearby rock, thoughts which he could understand as the language of stone was one of the secrets known by the order of Nin.

Those thoughts, stronger than any he had ever heard before from rock or stone, or even mountain, were bitter as the face of a widowed bride, bitter as the torment of a young warrior who has lost both eyes from the wounds of his first battle, bitter as the snarl of a hostage whose king – his brother, no less – has by the breaking of a treaty doomed him to lose both his hands and his feet. Miphon lay there, half asleep, listening, piecing together the lament of the rock:

Time was time when the seven-octave wind, Lighter than year-first frost, Lighter than Tremulo's touch, than Vyvan's reverberation, Could through me funnel, shaping latelments: When my desire could fist my thought to form Or race the daylight to the night's delight -Stars to calm tentharow aftermath, half-dreaming trance That followed passion – Passion we had in days of then When mountains, garrulous and strong, Desired the thunder, fought with lightning For favour and delight -Lemarl! That world where I had sight!

Years faded brightness to an echo of remembered echoes, Till only echoes we remembered – Not the glitter-diamond light of crystal Tremulo, The stride and pride of Vyvan's march, And Lemstol's flight – Far less the actual face of Wathnamora, The songs of Telemornos And the jokes the mountains told.

Gone for ages, as if forever: then given! No brief surge of strength, strong, but false and failing, That earthquake brings: This was animation to outpace the wind! Berserk in exultation, My balance spun to frenzy. Joy! My eyes seventy Blazing to the sun!

The world of pulp rolled under as my onslaught Rolled the day to night while the wide earth rolled, And overhead the stars succumbed to sun, Renewed, and then were sun again.

Then gone: the world smashed down to darkness. A shuffle, then a final jolt. The sun went blind. Now silence pits dark against nothing. Weight renews forever.

There is no death for us: no hell: no resolution. Only the substance split and folded from the substance, Halving, and, again, halving, Till strength and intellect lie sharded into sand, Too small to think, remember or compute: Pinhead specks of hatred, loss and sorrow Where half-words fractured from millenium memory echo.

It happens. Truth is bitter as stamagan's taste: bitter As the stretch of sun, the ice contraction, Season's wedge which splits my substance open. Lemarl: that world Had no shadows. No grind of seasons.

The mortal creatures of the pulp have shadows: Vague, to match their mist. And I today so low that I Envy their mortality…

Miphon, half asleep, listened… floating… heard the lament begin again. The repetition reminded him of an animal pacing the bars of its tiny cage. Perhaps the rock would recite the same words for another thousand years, without change: they were all more or less mad, those voices of stone, and with good reason. He knew the rock might change its tune if it became aware of the creatures of pulp camping beside it, but that would take days to happen if it happened at all. Rocks sensed the world slowly, vaguely, or not at all.