Sword Brother

'As to that,' Wencit said, 'the person you want to be thanking is Gunnery Sergeant Houghton here. He and Corporal Mashita were kind enough to give me a ride.'

'And just how was it you . . . inveigled them into anything as daft as that? Did you ride up to them out of a snow flurry in a swamp?'

'I've only used that particular technique once, I'll have you know,' Wencit said in dignified tones. 'In this case, I simply mentioned to them that I had a friend-two friends, actually-who were about to get themselves into trouble all over again. Once I'd explained, they decided they didn't have anything better to do tonight.'

'Did they now?' Walsharno reached the vehicle and halted. Sitting in the saddle, Bahzell was taller than the ungainly-looking thing, and he reached his right hand towards Houghton.

'I'm thinking as how no one in his right mind would be after volunteering for something like this,' he said. 'Still and all, it's grateful I am. And impressed.'

* * *

Bahzell's voice was the deepest one Kenneth Houghton had ever heard. It seemed to roll up from his toenails and then rumble around inside that vast chest of his until it reached critical mass and came spilling out with the power of James Earl Jones on steroids.

That was Houghton's first thought. Then he noticed Bahzell's tufted, foxlike ears, thrusting up through the special openings in his helmet.

Nope, still not in Kansas, Toto, he told himself wryly.

'I probably wouldn't have volunteered if I'd really realized what we were getting into,' he heard himself saying aloud as he reached out to take the proffered had. 'And I imagine I'm even more impressed with you than you are with me.' He shook his head. 'You may think I'm out of my mind, but I know you are! At least I had an LAV and not just a sword!'

'Ah, well, as to that, I'd a bit more than 'just a sword' working for me.' Bahzell's grin showed white, strong teeth.

'That's true enough,' Wencit said. 'On the other hand, if you two can tear yourselves away from your mutual admiration society, there are still some rather unpleasant people in the neighborhood.'

'Aye, so there are.' Bahzell nodded. 'In fact, I've the oddest notion, given what's just been happening here, as how those unpleasant folk have been putting themselves to quite an effort so as to invite Walsharno and me to their little get-together. You wouldn't be knowing anything about that, would you, Wencit?'

'I believe I told you-once, at least-that I'm a wizard and wizards are supposed to know things.'

* * *

'So much for your demons!' Garsalt snarled.

'My demons?' Cherdahn glared back at the balding wizard.

The priest and his three wizard 'allies' sat in luxuriously comfortable chairs around a long, glassy-smooth table of stone. The stone walls were covered with tapestries-less horrifying, thankfully, than the mosaics of the main tunnel, although still gruesome enough to affect most people's appetites- and wall sconces less brilliant than the tunnel's overhead spheres spread gentle illumination through the sumptuously furnished chamber. The dinner dishes had been removed before Bahzell arrived, and they'd been sipping wine with celebratory anticipation as they watched the images Garsalt's scrying spells had projected into the head-sized gramerhain crystal hovering in midair above the table. But those images hadn't shown them what they'd hoped for, and now their wine glasses sat ignored on the table while he and Cherdahn locked fiery eyes with one another.

'The Scorpion's servants did exactly what they were supposed to do,' Sharna's priest half-spat. 'And, forgive me if I seem a little confused, but I was under the impression that you knew where Wencit was. Apparently, I was mistaken, wasn't I? And did you simply forget to mention that . . . that . . . whatever that thing out there is?'

'Of course not! But if you'd done what-'

'Enough, Garsalt!' Tremala snapped, and both men (assuming the term 'man' was still applicable to Cherdahn) turned to glare at her, instead of each other.

'No,' she continued, once she was certain she had their attention, 'the demons didn't succeed. That certainly wasn't Cherdahn's fault, however, Garsalt. Nor was it ours. We opened the portal exactly as planned, and without Wencit's arrival, the Bloody Hand and his horse would both be dead now and the demons who'd survived their encounter with him would be waiting for Wencit, when he came blundering in too late to save the Bloody Hand. So yes, Cherdahn, we should have told you where he was. Unfortunately, we did. The last time Garsalt and I checked, Wencit was still at least ten leagues from here.'

'Then you should have checked more recently,' Cherdahn said icily.

'We last checked less than twenty minutes before Bahzell arrived outside your door,' Tremala said sweetly.

'That's ridiculous!'

'Yes, it is, isn't it? Unless, of course, he knew exactly what was going on-exactly what we had planned-and built a glamour within a glamour expressly to deceive us.'

'That's impossible, Tremala,' Rethak objected. She looked at the dark, dapper wizard, whose specialty was the creation of sophisticated glamours, and he shook his head. 'He may be Wencit of Rum, but even so, he couldn't possibly have known. Certainly not long enough ago to set something like that up!'

'What's he talking about?' Cherdahn demanded suspiciously.

'The only way Wencit could have deceived us that way would have been to build two glamours,' Tremala said. 'One of which-the one we knew about-was designed to keep us from locating him at all, or so we thought. And the second of which was intended to deceive us into thinking he was farther away than he really was just in case we did manage to relocate him. And, just coincidentally, allowed us to 'know' where he was without letting us actually see him or his surroundings, which meant we didn't know anything about that . . . vehicle he brought with him.'

She paused for a moment, one eyebrow arched, until Cherdahn nodded impatiently for her to go on.

'Unfortunately, there are two problems with that possibility. First, we-or, rather, certain . . . colleagues of ours-have been monitoring him for weeks. We knew, or thought we did, exactly when he became aware of our plans, because that was when his glamour of concealment went up in the first place. At which point, exactly as we expected, we lost track of him for quite a while. But not even Wencit of Rum could have built two nested glamours without the ones watching him realizing what he was doing, and nested glamours have to be put together very carefully. The inner glamour has to be erected first, Cherdahn, and there's no question at all but that the glamour we finally managed to pierce is the original, outer one we saw go up in the first place.'

'Then, obviously, you're mistaken about what he did.'

'Do I tell you how to summon the Scorpion's Servants?' Tremala demanded, her lip curling scornfully. 'I'm not mistaken about what he did, but it's just become abundantly clear that we've all been mistaken about when he did it. That's the second problem I mentioned. It's the order in which the spells are cast, not the order in which they