where an old wizard might miss his footing in the gloom and end up waist-deep in ovenhot mud. 'Tonight we'll shelter in the fort.'
'A damp, ugly ruin if ever I saw one,' said Garash.
'Sleep in the rain if you don't like it,' said Phyphor.
Miphon said nothing. Trying to play peacemaker between these two was, he had discovered, singularly unrewarding. Phyphor, having trained Garash, was deeply disappointed with his pupil, who had turned out to be reckless, power-hungry and amoral; Garash, for his part, bitterly resented Phyphor's refusal to release him from his apprenticeship, despite his mastery of his art.
The wind, kicking up ripples in the puddles, found no gate to bar the way as it whirled into the fortress. Entering, Garash dared a Word of Location: 'Onamonagonamonth!'
He was richly rewarded.
From half a dozen different directions, bell-like notes rang out. As the deafening noise died away, Garash cried, in great excitement: 'There's magic here! There's power!'
'Of course, fool!' roared Phyphor. 'My fire-iron, my staff of power, that oddment slung around your neck. Quite apart from all that, there's the power sources for the flame trench.'
'Oh,' said Garash, crestfallen.
'Honestly,' said Phyphor, 'Sometimes you're so stupid I feel like kicking you from here to breakfast.'
Garash did not take that criticism well.
'Let's explore,' said Phyphor.
There was little to the fort but a courtyard, a crumbling wall surrounding it, and one squat tower. Wooden stumps, the remains of floor beams, were embedded in the towerstones at three levels. A separate, steadily rising curve of stumps showed where the stairs had been. Saba Yavendar must have seen similar things in the years of chaos after the fall of the Empire of Wizards, for he had written:
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.
CHAPTER TWO
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.
