Segenarith. The word had been sufficient to overcome the powers of the sleeping secrets.
'A pity to kill you,' said Ebonair, his voice slow and slurred. 'Such power! But there's no other wav, is there?'
Ebonair dropped the bag containing the death-stone. 443 He drew the sword Hast. Miphon tried to conjure up that vision of a world of life-energies: tried to work his way back into the ghost-body. He failed. 'Die,' slurred Ebonair.
The sword Hast ripped through the air. A wild swing. The wizard was un-coordinated, brain-damaged. He had almost been too late using the Ultimate Injunction.
Miphon leapt back out of reach of the sword. Ebonair slashed at him again. Miphon was forced back, out toward the entrance. If he turned to run, if he took his eyes off that blade, he would be killed.
The sword swung again.
Miphon jumped back – too slow!
He screamed as the blade knifed across his flesh. He fell to the stones of the battlements, clutching his pain. The Hearst-body loomed over him. A voice cried: 'Hold!'
Through eyes that were slits of pain, Miphon saw Blackwood taking the death-stone from its bag. He saw Ebonair wheel, advance on Blackwood, then hesitate. Miphon heard Ebonair begin to speak. It was hard to hear because of the pain. But then the pain was – - less.
– Pox doctor, heal yourself.
– Bone to be bone. Flesh to be flesh. Skin to be skin. And Ebonair was saying: 'Be reasonable. It's a generous offer. To rule the Harvest Plains is no small thing. You can't do it by yourself.'
'Tell me more,' said Blackwood.
Though Ebonair could not see how Miphon was healing, Blackwood could – and was having a hard job to keep his amazement from his face.
'You could become a wizard if you wished,' said Ebonair. 'You already know the High Speech. That makes it much easier. Have you any idea what it means to become a wizard?'
Miphon was ready. He struck.
This time he had no sense of the world as life-energies, no sense of himself as a ghost. He had only needed such tricks of perception while he was first coming to terms with the powers of the sleeping secrets. Now Miphon used his strength swiftly, intuitively, doing exactly what he had to.
One moment Ebonair was talking. The next instant his mind had been torn to pieces. The Hearst-body collapsed again. Miphon looked at Blackwood, who stood flipping the death-stone from one hand to the other.
'You can let it go now,' said Miphon. Blackwood dropped the death-stone as if it was poison.
'Is Hearst dead?' said Blackwood. 'I hope not,' said Miphon.
He examined Hearst's mind. The sensation was almost like listening to the mind of some wild thing -but* sharper, clearer, more painful. Painful because Miphon felt Hearst's agony, his indecision, the suffering of a man trying to cope with the complexities of a world which the heroic simplicities of his upbringing had not equipped him to deal with.
And Miphon realised he could cure that pain, deleting certain memories, closing down certain lines of thought. He could instill, where necessary, an ordered doctrine of etiquette and ethics, shaping Morgan Hearst into the precise tool he needed to perform that highest function: bringing about a peace between wizards and warriors. What greater glory than to serve as a peacemaker?
Hearst groaned, sitting up.
'Are you all right?' said Blackwood, kneeling by him. 'It's all over now,' said Miphon. 'The wizard's dead.' 'What about that staff?' said Hearst. 'That's just a piece of wood now,' said Miphon.
'There's no power left in it any more.'
It was hard to talk in a normal tone: he felt drunk with exultation. Such power! He would use it to reform the world.
Miphon knew what had to be done to Hearst. Would he also have to reshape Blackwood? He examined Blackwood's memories, let himself see the world through Blackwood's eyes. By the time Miphon was finished, he was very quiet; he had been first shocked then humbled by what he had learnt.
In Blackwood's memories, Miphon had discovered visions. He had seen the flame of life; he had seen the beauty of the vitality which graces every life. He had seen the way in which each thing is true to its own nature: nothing can be changed by an application of cleverness without destroying its essential nature. He had learnt how much he lacked in wisdom: what he had been about to do to Morgan Hearst would have been as evil as anything ever done by Ebonair.
'What's the matter with you?' said Blackwood, seeing how quiet Miphon had become. 'You look shocked.'
'You see visions,' said Miphon quietly.
'Yes,' said Blackwood, it's hard. I see… tragedy everywhere. I see people who never satisfy more than a tiny part of their potential, who are not what they wish to be, yet could be so easily if they only knew how. I see women dancing for men they hate, slaves honouring masters unworthy to rule the life of a rat. I see… so much that I can hardly bear to walk through the streets of Selzirk.'
'You have a choice,' said Miphon. 'You've no need to see such visions.'
'No man was made to,' said Blackwood. i can take away your visions – but I can never give them back,' said Miphon. 'You will see the world only through your seven senses.'
'Do it,' said Blackwood.
And Miphon did.
Selzirk lay in darkness, yet Morgan Hearst knew the dawn was approaching. He dressed quietly and armed himself with his sword Hast. He ran his hand over his head: the hair had been cropped to the stubble he favoured for a campaign. The death-stone, couched in leather, lay next to his skin.
So he was off again. He must go south to the flame trench Drangsturm and the Castle of Controlling Power dominating the western end of that flame trench. The encounter with the wizard Ebonair had brought home to him the perils of delaying any longer in disposing of the death-stone. He was still shocked at what a disaster his drunken bravado had almost brought upon Selzirk and the Harvest Plains.
Hearst paused to look down on the kingmaker Farfalla. Had she loved him? Or had she just sought to use him? She had not protested when he took other women – so surely she could hardly have loved him. Or could she?
The night before, she had wept; in the end, Hearst had slipped her a sleeping potion. Even now, toward morning, she was in the grips of that potion. Or was she? As Hearst watched, Farfalla rolled over and opened her eyes.
She reached for him, spoke, her voice drugged, weak: 'Morgan…?'
Hearst said nothing.
Fighting the drug, half-conscious, Farfalla spoke, to say: 'Don't leave me…'
It was a kind of love that spoke to him: a kind of need.
And to his horror, Hearst found that the way Farfalla spoke brought to his mind the way the woman Ethlite had spoken in the city of Larbreth in the Cold West, when he had been standing in the shadows and she had thought he was Elkor Alish.
Hearst remembered striding through the city with his fingers knotted in her hair and her head dangling. Alish had seen him. And in Runcorn, when Alish lay paralysed by poison, Hearst had boasted of that killing, as if the murder gave him title to a kind of glory.
He knew, now, exactly what he had done. And he knew, now, that Alish would never forgive him.
He turned on his heel and walked away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The trio were supposed to leave Selzirk at noon, travelling by ship down the Velvet River to Androlmarphos,
