“Hello there, Ilio.”
“What have you got in that bundle?”
“Damnation! I completely forgot!” The magician hastily extracted his staff and tossed the piece of cloth on the floor.
Ilio laughed.
“Well, look at you! Zemmel would have a fit if he saw the way you drag the symbol of the Order around. All right, let’s go. The Council’s waiting.”
“What’s happened? I was summoned the moment I got back,” Valder said, climbing up the staircase after his massive friend.
“Panarik and Zemmel have got an idiotic idea into their heads, and we have to put it into practice tonight.”
“An idiotic idea?”
Until that day he had never thought of the two most powerful magicians in the country as idiots.
“Exactly so,” Ilio replied morosely. “Precisely the right word for it. Zemmel’s been digging through the ogres’ old books again—you know yourself that he’s the only one who understands any of their gobbledegook. Well, he’s found a way to stop the Nameless One forever.”
“How?”
“He’s decided to destroy the Kronk-a-Mor that protects the wizard. In my opinion the whole idea’s a load of nonsense. The magic of the ogres is stronger than steel.”
“But—”
“But,” interrupted Ilio, continuing his progress along the winding stairway, “Zemmel has managed to pull the wool over Panarik’s eyes, and even over Elo’s, and that really takes some doing, doesn’t it? So today we have the night of the fools. Get ready for it.”
Valder bit his lip thoughtfully. Persuading the light elf, who was far from fond of Zemmel, would not have been easy. Almost impossible, in fact. But this time the lover of the ogres’ magic had indeed managed the impossible.
“What exactly do you mean?”
“The Order has taken the Horn out of its dusty trunk and decided to work a miracle.”
“I see,” Valder said, chuckling skeptically. “But what has all this to do with me?”
“Oh, come now!” said Ilio, genuinely surprised. “You and I will act as reservoirs of power. Panarik and Zemmel have to draw their energy from somewhere, don’t they? We are the two fools that the Council needed to complete its blissful happiness.”
“Are we the only ones who have been summoned?”
“No,” said Ilio, stopping beside a door encrusted with bluish ogre bone. “Not the only ones. Elo and O’Kart, too.”
“What about Singalus, Artsis, and Didra? Is the performance going to take place without their participation?” Valder asked in amazement.
That would mean that only six out of nine archmagicians of the Order would be involved in this absurd attempt to restrain the Nameless One.
“Singalus is in Isilia. As for Artsis—well, you know how Zemmel feels about our friend . . .”
“The way an orc feels about a goblin,” Valder said with a dour nod. “That’s a pity; Artsis would have been useful.”
“Who are you telling? I know that. But he ‘could not be found.’ Didra’s in Zagraba, with the dark elves.”
“So six archmagicians are going to destroy the Nameless One?” Valder whispered. “Doubtful, very doubtful. Didn’t Panarik think about calling in the higher-order magicians? Or even the entire Order?”
“He did, but Zemmel convinced him that the six of us could cope.”
“The cretin!”
“Worse than that. You’ve been away for a year and a half, right?”
“Two years.”
“Well, Zemmel spent all that time poring over the books of the ogres. If you ask me, it would be a better idea to stick your head into a giant’s mouth than to read those ancient tomes. He must have completely lost his reason, if he’s decided to mess about with the prohibited shamanism of the ogres.
“By the way,” Ilio said with a smile, “before we go in, would you care to dispose of your shield? That is what I can see glittering, isn’t it?”
Valder had completely forgotten that he was still maintaining the energy of the spell that had protected him against the bad weather.
“Perhaps you ought to remove it,” Ilio suggested good-naturedly. “You know how twitchy O’Kart gets when there are inexplicable energy surges. He’s so paranoid.”
