'No, you are to transport Delia,' Jemidon choked.
'In another minute, it will be nobody at all,' the imp squeaked. 'I am not sure I can manage one of your size as it is, and that excuse for a flame doesn't give me much room to maneuver.'
'Pilot, your duty,' Jemidon heard Ponzar call from outside. 'You will serve the Skyskirr, even if I must carry you to the table myself.'
Jemidon looked at the darkening sky and back at Delia's crumpled form. He saw Ponzar enter the cavern with a drawn sword. 'Delia and quickly,' he commanded the imp.
'No, I said it is to be Jemidon,' Delia managed to croak.
'I shall follow my master's orders, bub,' the sprite said. 'There is no other way. A gift, she said. A gift unfettered, with no obligation to repay. One free passage to the archmage in the domain of men. Now give me a finger and cut the chatter. It's going to be a tight squeeze.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Lord of Two Domains
THE passage through the flames was a confusion that Jemidon could not understand. When they parted, he struggled to pull his senses back into focus on patterns that his mind comprehended. In the distance, he saw morning-blue sky with pink on the horizon. To his right stood rows of tents behind emblazoned standards; on the left, squads of armored men were converging into formations. Directly in front, about a dozen startled men-at- arms scrambled to their feet as he emerged from their breakfast fire. Evidently he had arrived in the camp of the archmage on a day of battle.
'Take me to the archmage and quickly,' Jemidon said. 'He must send a large djinn to the place whence I came.' His heart raced with urgency. There was so little time.
'It looks human enough,' the sergeant said to his men, after a moment of shock. 'And the little imp with him has already disappeared. Surround him carefully. If he resists, we will see if he is full of blood or green ichor.'
'The archmage,' Jemidon growled. 'There is no time for petty debate. What I have to tell him of Melizar will be well worth his time.'
Jemidon felt a sudden prick of pain at the nape of his neck. He saw the drawn blades close in from all sides.
'Yes, the archmage it will be,' the sergeant said. 'He has a standing order to report anything out of the ordinary, even if it occurs just before the rebels attack.'
One of the men brought forth hinged bracelets of iron with a short chain in between. For a moment, Jemidon tensed, but then he forcefully emptied his lungs. 'Anything to speed the process,' he said, thrusting out his arms. 'Travel behind the flame is but the least of what I have to tell.'
In a moment, in the middle of a cluster of six, Jemidon was hurrying across the campground toward the group of silken tents with high pennons snapping in the morning breeze. He darted his eyes to either side as they trotted along. To his left, expanding almost as far as he could see, men-at-arms were dousing the last of their morning fires, slipping on their byrnies, and adjusting swords at their sides. Sergeants barked orders. Horse-borne pages waving standards called for where each group was to position itself in line. The faces of the men were grim. Tight-lipped, they did not engage in easy banter. When the eyes of their comrades were not watching, they cast furtive glances toward the hill to the north.
Jemidon looked out over the gently rising landscape. The foreground was empty. Cracked branches and trampled greenery indicated where the army must have marched the day before. Farther up the slopes was a motley of colors and glints of flashing metal that ran to the summit and stretched far to either side. It was the rebel army, packed shoulder to shoulder and marching in lockstep down the hillside. Jemidon tried to estimate the number, but gave up after he counted more than a dozen rows, He squinted to see the ragged end of the line on the east and saw that oceanside cliffs defined the other edge.
Behind the slowly moving wave, at the very top of the hill, were the smoldering ruins of Searoyal, a pile of jumbled rubble, where once had stood a walled city that could be seen leagues out to sea. Among the tumbled stones flapped the shabby canvas of the metamagician's tent. The sun glinted painfully from huge cubes of metal scattered to its left. Their covers gaped open into featureless interiors, like empty crates tipped on their sides. The tops of unneeded siegecraft were just visible over the crestline.
Jemidon glanced back at the men-at-arms. They all wore mail and carried shields of gleaming steel. Besides the standards of Arcadia, he saw the pennants of Procolon across the sea and even those of the southern kingdoms mingled with the rest. Barely two rows thick, the royal forces formed up, their thin line stretching to match the length of the one that approached.
On his right, Jemidon saw richly surcoated nobles emerge from their tents, testing the weight of their armor and slashing broadswords through the air. Squires tightened the girths on nervous horses and added the final polish to shiny helms. Behind the line of canvas, Jemidon could hear the pounding of the surf. He smelled the salt in the air. The royal forces were making a last stand; they had their backs to the sea.
In the center of the row, at the entrance to a modest tent beside the pavilion flying the royal colors of Arcadia, the sergeant pushed Jemidon's shoulder to duck and enter. Inside, along the opposite wall, had been erected a crude table of crates and planks. Along one side of the makeshift structure was a queue of pages that snaked through another opening at the rear. Seated behind the boards was a slight man in a robe of deep purple. His face was narrow and topped by fine yellow-brown hair. Wrinkles crept from the sides of eyes that had not known sleep for many hours. The furrows of concentration above the nose were no longer shallow with the smoothness of youth. Jemidon grunted as he looked at the robe. Along one sleeve were the logos of all five of the crafts.
'To Standall.' The seated master set down his pen and ripped the parchment from the roil. 'He is to use the ticklesprites only if lord Feston's elite guards falter. We call too much upon the demon world, as it is.'
The page at the head of the line took the message and disappeared through the opening. As the rest moved up, the master thought a moment and then hastily began scribbling another note.
'Melthon should continue trying the formula,' he said, 'for the chance that alchemy might return. He is of no help otherwise, and the attempt cannot possibly hurt.'
'Archmage Alodar,' the sergeant said in reverent tones. 'I realize that all of us must make the final preparations for battle, but something has transpired that I thought you should know.' Alodar looked up from his writing as Jemidon was jostled forward. 'He stepped from a flame just as a demon would, although, as you can see, he is quite normal in form.'
'Not wizardry as well!' Alodar muttered. 'If this is a portent that it, too, withers away, then indeed we truly are lost. It is the only craft left that we can use.'
'It remains unaltered as long as Melizar desires to conquer two universes,' Jemidon said quickly. 'He needs the means to travel between. And the laws do not just wither away. They are replaced abruptly by others. The Maxim of Perturbations instead of the Maxim of Persistence. The Rule of the Threshold rather than the Rule of Three.'
Alodar looked at Jemidon and his eyes narrowed. 'What babble is this? Neither magician nor sorcerer any more can ply his craft.'
'In place of those arts, there are two others. By the perturbations, Melizar has brought down the walls of Searoyal. With animations, he has enslaved the rebels to his commands.'
'Indeed, the minds of the people are clouded. That we have learned from the few who have been captured,' AJodar said. 'All our men are on guard to avoid any inducements that pull at their sight. And we abandoned the fortress and chose to fight on the plain, rather than be crushed by tumbling rock.'
'With thaumaturgy and alchemy gone, Melizar probably will unleash even more strange forces against you,' Jemidon said. 'You should prepare for them as well. His powers come from understanding metamagic, the Postulate of Invariance, the Axiom of Least Contradiction, and the Verity of Exclusion.'
Alodar's frown deepened. He rubbed his hand across his chin and, for a long moment, pondered what Jemidon had said. Then his eyes brightened; with a casual wave, he sent the pages away. 'As good a course as
