Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

'I can remember the way back,' said Hearst.

'Can you?' said Miphon. 'Now I am impressed!'

Echoes from their voices wandered through the heights of the world's greatest monument to dissonance. It took a long time to reach the Chamber of Communal Consent.

When, after immense labours, the Castle of Controlling Power had been finished, it had held eight meeting chambers. Any one of them could have served as a common gathering place, but no order would consent to meeting in a hall designed by another order. Yet nobody wanted to go on holding meetings in the open air, which was inconvenient, undignified, and, at times, dangerous.

When the castle had been nominally finished, its centre was a confusion of narrow corridors, tunnels, arches, pillars, walls and cells where the ambitions of all eight orders had clashed. This space was useless. After much argument, the wizards had agreed to demolish enough of the masonry to create a central meeting place. The Chamber of Communal Consent was the result: an irregular hall with three hundred ways in and out of it.

Miphon, Hearst and Blackwood made a quiet entrance, slipping unnoticed into the gloom of the meeting place. In that place, lit only by ochre firestones – it had no windows – strangers could not be identified as such very easily, since a face could scarcely be made out at a range of ten paces.

It smelt, badly, of musty old men, pipe smoke, and the strange, penetrating odour or quelaquire, the keflo-oil used by wizards to help preserve manuscripts. It was filled with muttering, arthritic voices; hundreds of wizards were gathered in groups, arguing, conferring, advising, rumouring; they sounded like a conclave of people many years dead in a limbo far beyond the life of the living.

Hearst and Blackwood wondered what was happening, but did not dare ask; Miphon knew that a meeting must have broken up so members of the various orders could caucus. All had perfect privacy: the acoustics of the place were so bad that it took a determined effort to make oneself heard over any distance in the best of circumstances.

As Miphon led them toward the throne occupied by the head of the Confederation for that month, Brother Fern Feathers, Hearst and Blackwood cast covert glances at the wizards they passed. Such old men! Gnarled, driftwood faces; faded eyes; weathered, liver-spot skin; creaking voices; withered beards. And so many of them!

Drawing near Brother Fern Feathers, they saw that, standing beside him, and talking earnestly, was a fat wizard. The travellers were almost at the throne before they saw the fat wizard was Garash.

'Withdraw,' murmured Miphon.

But it was too late.

Garash saw them.

'Rovac warriors!' roared Garash.

Those two words, like powerful magic, silenced all conversation in the room. All heads turned to see who was in their midst. Garash pointed: 'Rovac warriors!'

'Let's run,' said Miphon, quietly but urgently. 'No,' said Hearst, as wizards crowded in. 'No chance.

We'll have to talk our way out of this one.'

'We have, at any rate,' said Blackwood, 'their full attention.'

Some of the wizards activated strange devices which glowed with green and purple fire, illuminating the visitors. The air became hot, dry. It shimmered. The concentrated presence of so many anomalies stressed the very universe almost beyond endurance.

'They're under my protection!' shouted Miphon. 'As a wizard of Nin, I give them my protection.'

He did not try to explain that Blackwood was not a Rovac warrior. He saw fear, hatred, bloodlust in the faces closing in around them. This was no time for complicated arguments.

Hearst put his hand to the hilt of Hast, but knew it would be useless to match steel against the collective power of these wizards. From the look on the faces confronting him, he knew he was very close to death.

'They have my countenance!' cried Miphon. 'They come as an embassy!'

'We should endure this?' shouted Garash. 'Rovac warriors? Here? I say no – whatever their pretence.'

Muttering approval greeted his words. Hearst had faced mobs in the past, in times when cities under Rovac control had rioted, but he had never seen anything like this harsh, muttering, deadly earnest hatred. What to do? Die like a man: that was all he could do.

It was Blackwood who found the solution. Long researches in the memories Phyphor had bequeathed to him had revealed many of their secrets. One chance: one chance only. Blackwood pointed, throwing out his arm so all could follow the gesture. He pointed to Garash.

'You! I accuse! I accuse you! Garash, wizard of Arl, I accuse you of a crime against the Confederation of Wizards. Of murder! Of killing the wizard Phyphor!'

'Lies!' shouted Garash.

'I have witnesses!' shouted Blackwood. 'I name as my chief witness the Rovac warrior Morgan Hearst. Here he stands, a mortal man yet twice a dragonslayer.'

'Rovac warriors!' yelled Garash. 'Rovac lies!'

'It's true,' roared Hearst, in a battlefield voice.

'Kill them!' came a cry. Then: 'Scrag them under!' The hooks, the hooks!' 'Claw-bones the raggage!' 'Kala-kola ga!' 'Furrow their kidneys!' 'Batter them!'

'Silence!' boomed Brother Fern Feathers, who had a big voice of his own. 'Silence, by the Rule of Law!'

The tumult muttered down enough for Miphon to make himself heard: 'It is true. The accusation is true. Garash did murder our expedition leader. He did kill Phyphor. By the Rule of Law I swear it.'

'A trial,' said Brother Fern Feathers. 'No, Garash! I rule for your silence. Hear me out. We will have a trial in due course. The Rule of Law must be obeyed. Otherwise, we truly will have war within these walls.'

Miphon allowed himself a sigh of relief. A trial might take months. That would leave plenty of time for negotiations, diplomacy, explanations – or escape, if escape proved necessary. The greatest danger had always been that wizards, discovering a Rovac warrior in their midst, would be tempted to instant murder. Now – or so Miphon thought – the moment of greatest danger was past.

But Brother Fern Feathers was continuing: 'Meanwhile, leaving aside this matter of murder, we must call on these newcomers to make their contribution to our present debate.'

Til not be debated over by Rovac warriors!' shouted Garash.

This roused another chorus of angry murmurs, which Brother Fern Feathers quelled with difficulty.

'Only Miphon will speak to our debates,' said Brother Fern Feathers. 'The Rovac warriors will be given no voice until the trial, which is another matter entirely. Miphon here is our fellow wizard. He's the one I'll ask to speak.'

'Speak on what?' said Miphon. 'What are you debating?'

'The propriety of certain actions – quite aside from the question of killing – which have been undertaken by Garash,' said Brother Fern Feathers. 'For days we've debated whether to accept the tales and excuses Garash has given us. Let me review his claims, for your benefit – and also to clarify our own thoughts on…' i protest!' said Garash. 'I -' i have ruled for your silence!' said Brother Fern Feathers. 'Now hold your tongue, while you still have a tongue to hold!'

He stared at Garash until Garash dropped his eyes. A few wizards coughed and muttered, then, when they had settled down, Brother Fern Feathers began: 'Garash says that last autumn, in Stronghold Hand-fast, he fought the wizard Heenmor, strength against strength, power against power. He claims that Heenmor fled, escaping. Garash then went to the eastern coast of Argan and took passage on a ship southing from Brine.

'His winter southing took him to the Dry Pit. Knowing Heenmor was loose in the world, he took a source of power from the Dry Pit. The death-stone, he calls it. He says Heenmor has one so we must have one. He claims Heenmor represents a danger giving him the excuse to take power from the Dry Pit.