“Go back! Who knows what has happened?”
“I intend to find out. Why don’t you go back?”
I saved my breath.
As I ran on I was cursing away at myself for being such a fool as to bring the damned idol into the palace. What a blind idiot! Had I never heard of Troy, and the White Horse? What sorcerous mischief had I unloosed in Esser Rarioch?
A figure blundered into me and I grasped old Evold by the arms and shook him.
“Tell me, Evold!”
“My Prince-” He babbled on, shaking. “The eyes lit up again, just as you said!” He coughed and choked and spluttered and I let him go as he swiped at his streaming eyes. “San Khe-Hi, he was almost prepared as he had promised, and then it was as though the lightning struck. The idol shrieked! There was smoke and flame and a blue-green fire and-”
He had no need to say more.
From the wrecked door of the laboratory Khe-Hi-Bjanching stumbled, beating wildly at the darting black forms surrounding him. They dived from the air, swirling their ebony wings, and their shrill chittering filled the hall with the rustling whispers of the tomb.
Chyyans! Scores of tiny chyyans, with a wing spread of no more than two feet, swooped and darted and struck and clawed. I saw their baleful red eyes, the raking dart of their scarlet talons. Their beaks gaped wide. Khe-Hi stumbled and fell. I leaped forward, ripping the rapier and main gauche free. I stood over him, straddle- legged, and at once my blades swirled and swished to cut down the fluttering horrors. They appeared almost like bats, vampire bats, lunging in to sink their fangs into my neck and suck me dry.
But each black chyyan had four wings, four wings clad in rusty black feathers. They swooped and darted and struck, and I felt the sting on forehead and arms as they clustered thickly about me and sank their talons into my flesh.
“Wizard!” I bellowed, slashing about me wildly. “Cast a spell or something! Drive them off!”
“I have spelled them already,” came the gasping wheeze from the wizard. He tried to crawl out from between my knees and a tiny chyyan slashed at him, so that he cried out and scuttled back.
“Well, for the sweet sake of Mother Diocaster! Spell them again!”
I heard a furious yell from along the hall and between slashing and ducking turned. Turko was there, laying about him with his parrying-stick. And my Delia, slim and glorious in her slashed ivory gown, my Delia sliced and cut with the long slender jeweled dagger in whose use she is so superbly skilled.
“San!” I bellowed. “You must run for it!”
I shoved the dagger into my mouth, ricking my lips back in the old way so my teeth could grip the blade. I reached down with my left hand and hauled Khe-Hi out by the scruff of the neck. My right hand seemed of its own volition to be flickering the rapier about, chunking great swatches of black feathers away, slicing and cutting, never thrusting, for in a game like this that was the sure way to die. I gave Khe-Hi a good rousing kick up the backside and sent him scuttling and staggering down the long hall.
Then I reached my Delia and with three blades we wove that old deadly net of steel. She flashed me a single smile. We went to work, then, in real earnest.
Jiktar Larghos Glendile appeared, raging, roaring into the fight with a rapier and two daggers, and with a blade gripped in his tailhand. He was worth two men in that kind of fight. Others of my people showed up, and soon we could actually count the numbers of chyyans remaining. I bellowed.
“Save some! Do not slay them all!”
Then ensued a riotous chasing rout as the fluttering birds sought to escape from the palace, and my people, whooping as though on a rampage, chased them through the corridors and up and down the stairs, seeking to cast nets and sacks and whatever came to hand over them. In the end we caught three of them, penned in sacks, and the stout material bulged and strained. Turko hit a bulge with the parrying-stick and the bird in the sack quieted down.
Once again what had begun as a drama, as tragedy, ended in farce.
“Khe-Hi!” I said, and at my tone he stiffened up, looking woebegone in his ruined finery, but nonetheless still retaining his dignity as a Wizard of Loh.
We went back to the laboratory and Khe-Hi pointed out what was left of the idol. Bits and pieces of black stone were scattered about the chamber. The windows were blown out. The tables were overturned. The place was a shambles.
“Khe-Hi!” squeaked San Evold. “You’ve ruined my chamber!”
“Not me, old man. Rather this Makfaril of whom the prince speaks.”
“I’ll do more than speak about him,” I said, very nastily. “You said you had spelled them.”
“So I did, my Prince.” Here Khe-Hi pulled himself together and became again a famous Wizard of Loh.
“Had I not done so we would have been beset by full-size chyyans.”
Turko whistled. Jiktar Larghos Glendile nicked his tail-hand about. I said, “So you did well, wizard. Did you seek to open the idol before I arrived?”
“No. No, my Prince! The eyes lit up again as you described when my preparations were almost complete. I understand what happened. A wizard was controlling the idol and saw what I intended. He released the hidden sealing spells and there was a sound as of thunder and a blue-green light as of leprous lightning.”
That was as good a way as any to describe an explosion to those who did not know of gunpowder. The spell I had set reduced whatever was in the idol in stature and power. So the eggs-”
“Eggs?”
“The idol was packed with chyyan eggs that would hatch into full-sized chyyans instantly, bypassing normal growth. It is a trick some wizards employ. My counter-art reduced the size of the chyyans.”
“Lucky for us,” said Glendile. He had four weapons to clean, and was hard at work even as we stood talking.
“And the light was blue-green?”
“Yes.”
That did not square with a gunpowder explosion.
“Damned sorcery,” I said. “I don’t hold with it. Another wizard?”
“A most potent practitioner of the arts.”
I looked at Khe-Hi-Bjanching. We all knew of whom we thought.
It was left to Delia to say, in a calm, even voice, “Do you think, San, it was this infamous Phu-si- Yantong?”
Khe-Hi scowled. “I do not know. By Hlo-Hli, my Princess, I do not know!”
This was a poser. I was prepared to credit Yantong with any evil you care to imagine. Once a fellow has run into evil of that nature he tends to see his opponent as more black than a night of Notor Zan, until, with wisdom, comes the understanding that character shades into gray and purple and bilious green. All the same, Phu-si- Yantong!
“I have told you of the Wizard of Loh, Que-si-Rening, kept by the Empress Thyllis in Hamal. Do you think it could have been him? After all,” I added, trying to appear casual and making a dismal mess of it,
“after all, everything about the Chyyanists points to another ploy from Hamal.”
“I swear by the Seven Arcades, my Prince! I cannot tell. The sorcery was sealed by great power. It is possible among high adepts to conceal ego-traces, to hide the personality patterns. I can do this to an extent. There are few wizards, I venture to think, who would discover what I did if I did not wish them to, but of course there could be a few who would have the power.”
This was mighty humble pie for Khe-Hi, I saw.
I nodded, not satisfied, but unable to do anything about that dissatisfaction for the moment. A clatter of dislodged stones and debris from one of Evold’s smashed tables turned our attention to Balass, who straightened up lifting a dusty round object from the jumble. He blew on it and dust flew.
“Now what is this?” he said, turning, walking across with the round plate balanced on his upturned palms.
I was aware of Khe-Hi at my side, of the way a tremor shook through him. I shot a swift searching glance at him. The wizard’s face looked strained, a deep furrow dinting down between his eyebrows. He sucked in his
