Hugh Cook: The wizards and the warriors

Where wind may walk but men no longer, Stairs rise in easy stages to the vaults of air; Our lives have become to climb them.

From the tower, strong stone steps curved away downwards, into the unknown.

'I wonder what's down there,' said Garash.

'Would you care to investigate?' said Phyphor.

Garash wiped a drop of rainwater from the end of his nose.

'I'll leave that honour to you,' he said.

Cautiously, Phyphor started downwards, ready to blast any lurking monster with fire. He went quietly, but not silently. Rainwater dripped from his cloak and water squelched in his boots. Entering the darkness, he whispered a Word. His right hand began to glow with a cold light which glimmered on spider webs and damp stone.

He turned a corner: and found treasure.

A stack of firewood, lumped up in a cellar.

It was damp, true, and colonised by woolly grey mould, but it was richness all the same. Small bones marked the cellar as an animal's lair, but no fur and fangs contested possession.

'Treasure,' muttered Phyphor, kicking the firewood.

He said a Word, and the glow from his hand died away. Standing there, breathing darkness, he longed to be back in the Castle of Controlling Power, which commanded the western end of the league-wide flame trench – the Great Dyke, some called it, while others named it Drangsturm – which reached from the Central Ocean to the Inner Waters in the east, so dividing the continent of Argan in two.

'Hey, it's wet up here,' shouted Garash. 'Can we come down? Can you hear me? Is it safe?'

'Come on down,' said Phyphor.

Garash joined him, but Miphon stayed outside to hobble the donkey. By now, it was so dark that he was almost working by touch; the mountains were dissolving into mist. His job done, he took the heavy saddlebags down to the cellar and heaped some wood together for a fire. Phyphor threw a fire-iron onto the wood and muttered a few words. The wood steamed as winter damp dried out, then kicked into flame.

'I could have used my tinder box,' said Miphon.

Phyphor made no answer, not wanting to confess how badly the rigours of this latest march had chilled him. He was too old for this kind of expedition: that was the truth of it.

The fire made them feel better; as Saba Yavendar said:

Fire is always friendliest in a world of foes, Poor man's dancer, widow's warmer, child's enchanter;

Always, even in the winter chill, as summer warm Toward my autumn bones, my widower's rest.

While Garash grumbled about the smoke from the fire, Miphon cooked. They ate. Then they sat apart, mumbling through the Meditations of Power which allowed them to gather the strength they needed for sorcery, and the Meditations of Balance which prevented that strength from spontaneously destroying them.

Then they fell asleep, to dream their separate dreams.

Phyphor had nightmares about the Swarms. He dreamt of twisted shapes against the sky, twisted screams in the noon-day sun in the days when the Neversh flew. He dreamt of the Stalkers and the lowly scuttling keflos, of the double-hulled Engulfers, the green centipedes, the Wings, the tunnellers, the blue ants, and all the others – the fearless myrmidons of the Skull of the Deep South.

Miphon pillowed his head on a stone, ignoring, as he settled to his dreams, its distant grinding curses; the stone still remembered the pain when men, for their building, had split it to its present size.

Once asleep, Miphon dreamt the dream of the stone. (Lamentations: "Lemarl! Lemarl!') Dreamt the dream of the stone, lay in the dreamtime which is neither Lemarl nor Amarl, lay in the dream-time which is the nothing time, chaos in which the mind can be creator. 'Lemarl,' said the stone. Not weeping, not wishing it could weep: whatever it remembered, it had forgotten both tears and laughter.

Miphon woke once to hear Garash in a corner, grunting, straining. Why can't he go outside? Because it's raining, that's why. Again he woke, finding water dripping from the cellar rocks onto his face. He shifted to a place dry but less comfortable. He renewed his stone dreams.

Garash, for his part, dreamt of food.

Name: Garash. Occupation: wizard.

Status: apprentice to Phyphor, though his training is completed.

Description: stout grey-robed individual with bulging eyes, small scruffy beard and smallpox-scarred face of indeterminate age.

Career: reputedly served the Silver Emperor of Dalar ken Halvar for two centuries before fleeing Parengar-enga after participating in an unsuccessful coup. Began but did not complete apprenticeships with both a wizard of the order of Varkarlor and a wizard of the order of Ebber before taking service with Phyphor.

'Wake up!'

Garash, kicked awake from a banquet, opened his eyes to darkness.

'By the seventh hell!' he growled, his eyes full of sand, his mouth full of stones, 'What is it?'

His dreamtime banquet had disintegrated, but he could still remember the tantalising smell of roast pork. Or was it long pig? One was as good as the other, in his experience.

'Up!' said Phyphor. 'Up!'

'Alright, alright,' said Garash. 'I'm on my feet. What now?' 'Come on, Miphon.'

'No need to use your boot like that,' said Miphon, searching for his feathered hat. 'I'm ready.'

'Hurry then. Up the stairs.' 'What is it?' said Garash. 'Tell us!' 'Outside! Now!'

Miphon groped for his boots, could not find them. Went barefoot. Floor wet, rain dripping through stones, pools in concavities, stairs wet. Garash stumbled, cursed, slipped, swore.

'Hurry up,' said Phyphor.

Up the curve of the stairs – faint phosphorescent gleam from Phyphor's cloak – up the stairs and Out into the courtyard. Garash lubbered along last, panting. Rain fell steadilv. Waves crashed against the shore.

'Look!'

On a hillside two leagues north, a stand of trees was blazing. Other conflagrations glowered in the distance.

'What are they?' said Garash. 'War beacons?'

The sky answered him with a bellow of rage and pain.

'Dragon,' said Phyphor.

'It sounds as if it's gone mad,' said Garash.

'Perhaps it has,' said Phyphor.

Now they understood his urgency. Their donkey, Smeralda, was out there somewhere in the darkness. If the dragon happened to chance upon her, it would know there were people here.

'How far's the donkey gone?' said Phyphor.

He did not know what he asked. It was one thing to listen for Smeralda's thoughts, and quite another to decide distance and direction. Miphon was equal to the task: but only just.

'South,' said Miphon. 'Two hundred paces, maybe less.'

'Get it!' said Phyphor. 'Hurry! Then we'll take shelter.'

'Why kick me up here for this?' grumbled Garash. Phyphor said nothing, but watched as Miphon splashed away into the night. 'Phyphor!' said Garash.

Phyphor looked up. Overhead, a red spark reeled 20 through the sky, like a bit of burning straw spinning in the wind.

'Hold!' shouted Phyphor. 'It's overhead! Back to the cellar!'

The three wizards stumbled down the stairs and stood together in the darkness, wet and panting.

'Call the donkey to you,' said Phyphor.

'I'll try,' said Miphon. 'But it takes time. It's hard work. I can't guarantee success.'

'Try.'

Miphon blocked out the sounds of falling rain, surf-echo, dripping and trickling water. His mind listened for Smeralda's mind. And heard, instead, the dragon's mind – a senseless chant of pain, rage, hate, fierce as the warrior who wrenches a spear from his side and turns it on the enemy.

Then all heard the rush of wings pitched to a scream as the dragon plunged down, down toward the fortress, down with such reckless rage that Miphon thought it would hit the earth. It wrenched out of its dive, blasting the fort with fire as it skimmed past fast as falling. The cellar entrance flamed orange-red.