Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

– This is what it will be like after the death-stone kills everything.

Miphon shivered, and went on.

Had this place been a library? A prison? A holding pen for hostages? Or a refuge in times of fire, flood, war? It could have been used for conferences, allowing wizards of different orders to meet, safe in the knowledge that none could use magic on the others. Perhaps Miphon might be able to find a ring that would let him leave the bottle.

Otherwise, the only way out was by a drop-hole, which was suicidal. Anything thrown into a drop-hole was subjected to tremendous acceleration; climbing down, one would be torn from the walls by that acceleration and spat out at the other end at a considerable velocity. Even if Miphon could, by a miracle, have got safely to a drop-hole's exit under the overhang of one of the wizard towers, he would have needed a second miracle to survive the difficult climb to the top of the battlements. If the fates denied him a double miracle, the drop-hole promised only a death in the flames of the fire-dyke.

So: no ring, no escape.

On a table was a chess game, which had been abandoned at a difficult stage. Miphon puzzled over it for a while, then placed a wizard aboard a dragon to be ready for flight or attack. He walked around the board to look at it from the other side. Now the counter to that move…

Miphon shook himself.

A Rovac warrior caught in this trap would have been 270 tearing the room apart to find some ring or key or tool or clue that would secure release. No Rovac warrior would have given up without – at least! – ransacking this vast room. Could a wizard do any less?

Part of the problem was that Miphon, like any wizard of Nin, had always had that comforting thought at the back of his mind: if the worst comes to the worst, if there is no other way, then I will begin the rites of recall. I will recall the powers too terrible for a human being to be trusted to live with: I will open the book of Nariq.

But here in the green bottle, his magic would not work. He had no more resources here than any mortal man. Nevertheless: he had the room to search. He began.

Much later, he found the ring, which lay on a page of an open book. He put it on the ring finger of his left hand, then twisted it experimentally. It was only as he twisted it that he noticed the red bottle that stood on a nearby bookshelf. The ring turned full circle and Miphon was sucked into the red bottle.

Fear is the mind-sharpener.

A shadow wheeled over rock and sand. The men scattered. They dived for cover, and lay still. They could hear the creak of wings labouring through the sky. The shadow lurched over the rocks, once, then again. The dragon was circling overhead. Then they heard it alight on a bluff overlooking the ground where they were hiding.

It was hot. Hot and quiet. Morgan Hearst lay in an anorexic shadow in the lee of a rock. The desire to look up almost overwhelmed him, but to move could be death. Instead, he concentrated on his hand. He flexed the fingers: they were his own. But he saw the hand in all its strangeness, as though taking his first look at the paw of an alien species. i've got cramp,' said Erhed, a young man who had the weakest brain of any of Comedo's soldiers.

'Shut up, Erhed,' said Hearst.

'But I've got cramp!'

'Shut up!' hissed Hearst. i've got -'

Alish closed the distance in a convulsive leap. Smashed Erhed with a chunk of rock. Silenced him. Hearst lay still as death. Would that movement attract the dragon's attention? Would this be the end? He waited. And waited. And the dragon: did not swoop.

So Alish had saved them. Alish, hearing Erhed so close to panic, had acted. And Hearst had not: had been afraid to move, even though he had seen that Erhed was about to panic and run, bringing disaster to all of them.

In the Cold West, men had rightly called Hearst fearless: he did not remember being afraid in those days, not even at Enelorf when the troops of the Stormguard broke and ran in panic. Morgan Hearst, son of Avor the Hawk, had been bold to the point of recklessness, scorning fear and doubt.

However, when the chill of the Cold West had begun to get to his bones, Hearst had lost the absolute certainty which had previously characterised his every action. He remembered how they had been skirmishing outside the walls of Larbreth when the joints of his right arm had begun to seize up. He had wielded his sword left-handed while he made his escape. He had known fear then; and many times since.

And knew it now.

Where was the dragon? Was it still high on that bluff, or was it moving softfoot down to the killing ground where the men lay hiding? Could a dragon move softfoot? Was it playing a game with them, as a cat will play with a mouse? How long could the men lie there in the shadow of fear? Sooner or later one was sure to panic and run.

Hearst heard the dragon take to the air. The wings creaked. The shadow plunged overhead. Where was it headed? Was it gaining height, ready to dive down to attack them? 'It's gone,' said Alish, in a voice Hearst remembered from the Cold West: the voice of Bloodsword, He Who Walks, Our Lord Despair. 'On your feet,' said Alish. it's gone. Come on. Up! You, and you: carry Erhed. He's stunned.'

As the men slowly got to their feet, Hearst consulted with Garash. i thought dragons only flew by night,' said Hearst.

'No law tells them to,' said Garash. 'They may choose otherwise here.'

'What do you suggest we do then?' said Hearst.

'There is nothing to do,' said Garash. 'Except hope.'

'What's this?' said Alish. 'Taking advice from wizards, are we?'

'There's nobody else to ask,' said Hearst.

'Then we can keep our own counsel,' said Alish.

'Many value the advice of wizards, manroot,' said Garash.

'When fear speaks to fear, courage sees no reason to listen,' said Alish. 'We march.'

The challenge came the next evening. The Rovac warriors had heard not so much as a rumour of trouble, but then, they had been busy – Alish scouting ahead for the easiest route, Hearst helping Garash and Blackwood over the more difficult parts of the trail, and Gorn bringing up the rear to make sure no stragglers lagged behind. Those who wished to conspire had been given all the opportunities they could have wished for.

The mutiny was planned and led by Atsimo Andranovory, an experienced, dangerous man. Born in Lorp, a poverty-stricken land on the west coast north of Estar, he had spent part of his early life as a fisherman in the Lesser Teeth, before joining the Orfus pirates. Boozing and brawling had destroyed any prospects he might have had there: after quarrelling with a pirate captain, he had been put ashore at Iglis, in Estar, and had put his sword at Prince Comedo's command.

In Castle Vaunting, Andranovory had never amounted to much – he had just been a drunken bully boy. Even after they had left the High Castle, the thought highest in his mind had been the proper care and rationing of the two skins of hard liquor which he had carried in his pack.

However, it was now a long time since Andranovory had put alcohol to his lips – or, for that matter, to any less conventional part of his anatomy – and he was clear-minded and ready to assert himself. He knew full well that it would be easy enough to gain the Velvet River and retreat to the Harvest Plains in the south, whereas the journey north was taking them into danger, with every chance that winter would catch them on the desolate uplands of the Central Plateau.

Andranovory soon found he was not the only one who thought it was better to sing about heroes than to try to emulate them. After all, in this desolate wasteland there was no chance of any pillage, plunder or rape -unless, as Erhed said, one was to find a very young and tender dragon. All that was needed was the right moment to strike.