Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

'Garash arrived here at Summerstart with this death-stone. He tempts us with the prospect of limitless power; he speaks of the conquest of the world; he wishes to be made our leader.

'Since Garash came into our midst, many have died. I will not speak of what happened in the Castle of Ultimate Peace. We had thought such feuding over centuries ago, but all the old conflicts and schisms have been renewed by this… this death-stone.

'We cannot say what danger Heenmor represents. We have only Garash's words to go by. But this I do know: what Garash has done has led to killing amongst us already. It threatens to end our unity, such as it is.

'Though we have debated for days, nobody has been brave enough to prosecute Garash for entering the Dry Pit. But now Garash has been accused of murder, which suggests his tale may need revision.

'We have talked enough. Indecision will destroy us as surely as anything else. If nobody else will act, then I will. I will prosecute. I accuse! Hear me well, for in this matter -'

Then the wizard of Seth broke off, for Garash had taken out his death-stone. His face betrayed his purpose.

'No!' shouted Brother Fern Feathers.

Garash cried out in the High Speech. Hearst lunged toward him, but too many old wizards were in the way. A grinding sound began to dominate the chamber. The death-stone was beginning its work. Miphon remembered the battle with the wizard Ebonair. He remembered the Ultimate Injunction that enemy had used against him. If anything could stop the death-stone, it had to be the Ultimate Injunction. In desperation, Miphon cried out: 'Segenarith!'

Even as he shouted, Blackwood managed to close with Garash. The woodsman drove a blade hard and home. Garash gave a squeal of panic and agony. Blackwood stabbed him again, again, and he fell, dropping the death-stone. Blackwood crushed his throat, stamping down on it, making sure.

The sound of grinding had stopped.

Men drew back from the death-stone, as they might from a poisonous snake. It was Brother Fern Feathers who first dared approach it. He picked it up: and dropped it immediately. it's hot!'

Even as they watched, the death-stone began to glow. First blue, then red. Hot as a furnace. Wizards stepped back. Miphon realised the Ultimate Injunction had not conquered the power of the death-stone, which was now beginning to manifest itself in another form: heat.

'Run for your lives!' shouted Miphon, his voice commanding the chamber.

A tongue of flame twisted from the death-stone. Dragon-dangerous, it lashed out. A wizard was engulfed by a roar of flame. He spun round, burning, screaming..

Everyone – almost everyone – panicked.

Screaming, shouting, they trampled their way toward the exits. The death-stone began to spin, shooting off bolts of flame. Wizards jammed the major exits, pushing, jostling, clawing for freedom.

Hearst swore.

'We'll never get out!' he said. 'This way!' cried Miphon.

And, running, he led the way to a squeeze-gap in the wall behind the throne. They forced their way through the gap, breaking out into a deserted corridor.

'Follow me!' shouted Miphon.

And fled, the others hot behind him.

Blackwood and Hearst had no idea where Miphon was taking them. He led them through twisting corridors, down stairways, over bridges, until ahead they saw daylight. They came out onto a low battlement where.the air was hot, hot and gasping. A sea of flame lay beyond the battlement: the flame trench, Drangsturm. Looking across the flame trench they saw the barren countryside of the Deep South, habitat of the Swarms. The heat so distorted the air that the countryside wavered like an unstable mirage.

'Where now?' said Hearst, sweating.

'This way,' said Miphon, hoping he remembered correctly.

He led them through an archway then down stairs 485 spiralling into darkness. Only an occasional ochre firestone lit their panting shadows. Then they saw light. Daylight! A gateway! Running through the gateway, they gained the open air.

They had exited from the castle at the western end of Drangsturm. Here a buffer of basalt rock, two hundred paces wide, separated the flame trench from the waters of the Central Ocean. The buffer was guarded only by a low parapet: it was designed as a killing ground in which wizards could destroy any attack by the Swarms.

'Come on,' said Miphon, taking a few steps toward the buffer of basalt rock.

'You're crazy!' said Hearst. 'We can't go south! We'd die!'

From behind them came a deep, prolonged roar of falling masonry.

'The death-stone's destroying the castle,' said Miphon. 'But hundreds of wizards will escape. How many-friends do you think we've got among them now?'

'We are doing well,' said Blackwood. 'First Veda, now this.'

'The Deep South is dangerous, but it gives us a chance,' said Miphon. 'To stay here is certain death. So follow me!'

And, having little option, they did.

Morgan Gestrel Hearst, warrior of Rovac, woke from sleep and for a moment thought he was in hell. The ground shook; the air roared with dull, continuous thunder; the sky was suffused with the colour of blood; above him loomed a monster with huge underslung lobster claws. The monster had eight legs.

For a moment – and he suffered a lot in that moment – he stared aghast at what he saw. Then he remembered.

Of course.

Hearst lay back, breathing in the smell of cinnamon. He was in the transparent chamber of a keflo, a creature of the Swarms. The red glow filling the chamber was partly from the clouded sky, lit up by the blaze of the flame trench Drangsturm, which was responsible for the thunder and vibrations, and partly from the fireball where the Castle of Controlling Power was melting down.

Hearst remembered how Miphon, quite calmly, had led them into the Deep South, saying the Swarms kept clear of the castle because of Southsearcher raids and the powers of wizards. Toward evening, they had sighted the tall minar housing a colony of keflos; Miphon had led them inside at night, when the keflos were asleep. Finding the hatchery, they had killed embryonic keflos. Miphon had dissected certain sacs from the limp dead bodies; smearing themselves with the contents of these sacs, they had given themselves an odour much like cinnamon.

The keflos, so Miphon said, recognised each other by smell. The Southsearchers used tricks such as this to penetrate the kefio colonies; safe inside a keflo minar, they would not be bothered by any other creatures of the Swarms.

Come morning, they would find out if Miphon was right. How did he know? Hearst suspected Miphon had been a Southsearcher before he was a wizard – but Miphon did not choose to talk of his past. Looking at the monstrous beast bulking over him, Hearst wondered if it really would spare him when it woke. He had his doubts: but there was nowhere to run to. All he could do was trust.

After a while, he went back to sleep.

When Hearst woke in the morning, the keflo was gone. He had expected something that large to make enough noise to wake him when it moved. Miphon and Blackwood were gone. Where? Perhaps the keflo had eaten them – yet surely, if it had started eating people, it would have had appetite enough for three.

Through the transparent curve of the keflo chamber, Hearst studied the landscape. A few keflos were out and about in the countryside. From this height, they looked like discs, for their legs, jaws and organs of sense were slung beneath their domed and multicoloured carapaces. Keflo shell, a valuable product, was traded along the Salt Road; Hearst could see that keflos would not stand much chance against determined Southsearchers.

About three leagues to the north-west was a glowing mass of slag: the molten remains of the Castle of Controlling Power. The death-stone, which still blazed amid those ruins, had melted the ground around till it ran like lava. Clouds of steam were billowing up from the ocean.