Swords: 08 - The Fifth Book Of Lost Swords - Coinspinner’s Story (10 page)

      
“Did he say his name? Did he look anything like me? Was his hair the same color as mine?”

      
“I’m afraid I didn’t notice about his hair, or what he looked like in general. Yes, he did say his name—Booglay, Barclay, what was it now?”

      
“Buvrai,” said Talgai, in a small voice.

      
“That sounds like what he said. Yes, I’m sure that’s it.”

      
Everyone in the room was staring at Talgai now. He asked: “What was the message?”

      
“Only that he was imprisoned there—and under sentence of death.”

      
There was a pause in which no one said anything. Then Talgai’s informant went on: “In six days—I remember him calling that out into the square, over and over. In six days he was going to be hanged. There was a scaffold in the square…”

      
Talgai was standing utterly still, looking as if he had no trouble in believing any of this. He asked: “For what crime had this man been sentenced?”

      
The traveler, looking gloomy, said he didn’t know for sure, but he thought it might have had something to do with an offense committed in a Red Temple. He did know that major offenders from a wide district around were often brought to Smim for trial and execution.

      
Talgai nodded sadly. “My brother was always the wild one. I haven’t heard from him for many years, but…”

      
His informant, seeming embarrassed, muttered something about how those places, Red Temples, of course had a reputation for wild behavior among their customers, but still … anyway, the execution was going to take place in a very few days. There would just about be time for Talgai to get there before it happened.

      
His old friends and his several new acquaintances were all looking at the woodcutter awkwardly, and some of them at least offered condolences.

      
Talgai was still holding the marvelous Sword, and now he gazed at it with a peculiarly mournful expression.

      
The innkeeper offered: “Maybe, were it not for the lucky Sword, you wouldn’t have known … I suppose that’s good luck in a way.”

* * *

      
Within a few minutes of having received the grim news, Talgai was moving briskly along the trail to home. Clucking to his load beast, he tapped its rump with a stick to make it hurry. The beast looked back at him once, in dignified and silent protest, then stepped up its pace just slightly.

      
Walking the trail with a good stride, Talgai brooded sadly about his brother’s wasted life, and the all-too-credible news that he had just received. He would have to make good time if he was going to reach the town where his brother was imprisoned before it was too late to see him alive. But before starting on such a journey, of course, Talgai would have to go home and at least tell his wife and children what he was doing.

      
Some of the cash the woodcutter had obtained for the rare wood would go with him in his journey, for he knew that in large towns cash had a way of being essential. But he would leave half the money with his wife, to make life a little easier for her should Talgai be somehow delayed in his return.

      
Talgai had taken the tale of Coinspinner’s powers with at least a grain of salt; he knew it was wise to take that attitude with travelers’ tales in general, and especially with regard to tales of magical achievement. Still, considering what had happened to him, Talgai, since finding the Sword, he had to believe that it was bringing him good luck. Yes, even in the case of the bad news. If his brother was now going to die, it would be good to have at least a chance to see him first.

      
Talgai had already decided, without having to give the matter much thought, that he must take the Sword with him on his journey to town. What little Talgai had ever seen of prisons inclined him to fear that it might be difficult for him to see his brother even when he reached the prison. To do so he would probably have to deal with officials who were likely to want money—officials anywhere always seemed to do that—and even when given money they were likely to be difficult to deal with.

      
Yes, Talgai was going to need all the luck that this strange tool called Coinspinner could bring him. And as for his brother … well, luck probably had little to do with the predicament in which Buvrai found himself, though that scapegrace would doubtless blame everything on his bad fortune, as usual.

      
Coinspinner. Talgai muttered the name to himself over and over again, trying it out. He certainly couldn’t say that he liked the sound of it, however lucky the Sword might be. A name like that certainly suggested gambling, and in gambling lay ruin for rich and poor alike.

      
An hour later, Talgai the Woodcutter had reached home, had conveyed the good news and the bad news to his wife as well as he was able, and was already saying farewell to his worried family and getting ready to start out again.

      
He might have chosen to travel to Smim by boat—that would have been easier than walking, and a little quicker—except that his wife might well have need of the boat while he was gone, and it was hard to say how long that was going to be.

* * *

      
The wizard Trimbak Rao in his studio had learned of the attempt to ensnare Adrian very shortly after it took place. Naturally the Teacher controlled powers of his own that were connected with the City. And these entities had been on the scene, in the Emperor’s old park by the Red Temple, almost at once—Trimbak Rao never allowed his apprentices to enter the City entirely unwatched and unprotected.

      
Within an hour after the eruption of Adrian’s elemental and its violent clash with the powers subservient to Wood, Trimbak Rao was on the scene himself—he had private means of getting there, much faster than any hiking apprentice. In fact, he had within his compound what amounted to a secret entrance to the City, though as part of his students’ training he preferred to let them seek out their own.

      
As befitted his status as teacher, Trimbak Rao was suitably elderly in appearance, and in his demeanor there was often an air of mystery. Just now this air had been replaced by frantic eagerness. On his arrival in the park adjoining the Twisted Temple, the magician winced at what he saw, and stood for a moment with his eyes closed, looking like nothing more or less than a tired old man.

      
The land in the immediate vicinity of the park had been thoroughly devastated, though the Temple and many of the other nearby buildings remained essentially undamaged. Not so the dam, which Trimbak Rao remembered well. It no longer existed now. Much altered was the river’s channel in the immediate area, particularly going downstream from this site, where a number of buildings had in fact toppled. Raw heaps of shattered rock, intermingled with soils of different colors, now covered most of the area that had been a park, and his precious square of paving tiles had been quite buried. An earth-elemental, and quite a strong one, had erupted here, no doubt of that. What else might have happened was going to take longer to determine.

      
Nodding to himself, the Teacher looked around. One thing at least was sure; the mighty adversary, Wood, had evidently determined not to come to the City himself just now. Or, if he had come, he was already gone again. Trimbak Rao, with a faint shudder of relief, relaxed his posture of defense, and dismissed certain powers he had brought with him. He had come ready, as ready as he could be, to fight for his apprentices, though knowing full well that such a direct encounter against Wood himself could hardly have been other than suicidal.

      
Exercising some more subtle powers of his own, Trimbak Rao soon managed to locate several items of great interest, including some of his apprentices’ discarded clothing, packs, and weapons.

      
While he stood with an abandoned pack in his hands, considering, there came a minor landslide in one of the tall piles of raw earth nearby, and a sympathetic quivering of the ground beneath. One of the new mud holes was beginning to fill in. The fabric of the City was already starting to restore itself after the violent disruptions.

      
The Teacher persisted in his efforts to find Adrian and Trilby, but at first he was unable to find a trace of either one.

      
In the middle of a certain incantation, the wizard came to a pause. An idea had just struck him. Where, he thought to himself, is the canoe? He remembered full well that that vessel had been here on his last visit to the park. Well, it was hardly strange that it should be gone now, with the entire course of the river blasted. Whether it had gone with either of his apprentices was more than he could tell, but at least he could have hopes.

      
Two flying messengers had accompanied him from his studio, and now he dispatched them both to Tasavalta, by separate routes. It was his bitter but necessary duty to let Princess Kristin know that some kind of disaster had befallen, and the heir to the throne was missing.

* * *

      
With all the speed that could be managed, still more than a full day had passed before high-ranking aides of the Princess had reached the studio of Trimbak Rao, but now the Teacher and these representatives were holding an urgent conversation.

      
The eminent magician and teacher of magic Trimbak Rao did his best to explain to them just what had happened to Prince Adrian.

      
Kristin’s counselors now assured Trimbak Rao that of course the Tasavaltan hunt for both Woundhealer and Coinspinner was going to be pressed firmly. Though right now it looked as if both Swords might be gone permanently out of reach.

      
Adrian, as all who knew him had come to agree, had the potential to someday become a true magician-king, the like of which had not been seen for a long time.

      
For the sake of the realm, as well as for the youngster himself, it was necessary that this potential be properly developed.

      
Trimbak Rao was still optimistic that Adrian was safe and could be found—though perhaps not really as optimistic as he sounded.

      
Trilby’s fate was just as uncertain. Trimbak Rao still nursed hopes that the girl would make her own way back to her Teacher’s headquarters in one piece, bringing news of what had happened.

      
“Your powers are still searching for her in the City?”

      
“Of course. Even as they search for Prince Adrian.”

      
“And where do you place the responsibility for what has happened, wizard?”

      
The Teacher bowed his head. “Much of it is my own. I do not seek to evade that fact. I believe there is no doubt that the hand of Wood was behind the attack.”

      
No one disputed that. But no one assured the magician that he himself was free of fault.

      
He tried to answer accusations that had not been voiced. “Apprentices who have reached the level of the Prince and this girl regularly accomplish what I was asking them to do. I saw no reason to think they would be unable to do so!”

Chapter Eight

      
Adrian, standing ankle-deep in mud on the bank of an unknown river, felt certain that in the course of his downstream passage in the canoe he must have passed out of the plane of existence containing the City of Wizards. But he had no idea where he was, only that the magical aura, the feel of the world around him, was blessedly familiar. He was back in the world in which he had grown up.

      
Trimbak Rao had warned his students of a great many of the complications involved in the several routes leading into the City and out of it, and of the danger of their getting lost if they should deviate from the course he had planned for them to the small park and back. But, thought Adrian, the Teacher had utterly failed to warn them of anything like what had actually happened.

      
But then he had to admit it probably wasn’t the Teacher’s fault. Adrian, in his new state of shocked alertness, now understood clearly that he and Trilby on entering the City must have fallen under the spell of some extremely subtle and most powerful enchantment. Whatever that enchantment’s source, it had caused them to put aside all normal caution, and to forget or disregard all but one of their Teacher’s warnings, the minor and routine admonition not to be too much in haste. And they had allowed themselves to be distracted from their goal by trivialities until it was almost too late for Adrian to escape the forces gathering against them there.

      
He wondered now whether awareness had come entirely too late for Trilby—or whether it had never come to her at all.

      
The naked Princeling shivered, though both the air and the mud in which he stood were quite warm. He found no reassurance in trying to take stock of his situation. Not only had he lost his clothing, but his pack and canteen and hunting knife as well.

      
Probing the darkness around him as best he could, with a mind now free—as far as he could tell—of enemy influences, Adrian decided that he was safe for the moment.

      
Of course he and Trilby had thought themselves safe in the park beside the Red Temple, too.

      
Once the conflict had openly erupted there, events had moved so fast that Adrian had had no opportunity to be much frightened. But fear was overtaking him now.

      
“Trilby? Trilby!” he called, softly at first, then louder. But he received no answer. And he had no sense, either magical or mundane, of where the girl might be.

      
The little river, mysterious and nameless, into whose muddy bank his feet were slowly sinking, revealed no secrets as it went murmuring on toward its unknown destination.

      
At least there was no sign that the threatening forces the Prince had just escaped were going to pursue him here outside the City. No immediate threats were apparent, though the magical portents for the future here were ominous, now that he looked at them carefully. He decided that he had better not stay where he was if he could help it. Certainly the physical environment afforded by this riverbank was not attractive—besides the treacherous footing, he stood confronted by a wall of growth, a great part of it thorny, dense to the point of impenetrability. Nor did anything the boy could make out upon the river’s opposite shore suggest to him that conditions would be more congenial there.

      
The night air here, wherever he was, was really surprisingly warm, and when he had splashed ashore the water had felt warmer than he remembered it in the City. The sky was clear and looked normal, and the time here, as near as Adrian could judge it by the visible stars and planets, was an hour or two before dawn.

      
But he had fled the vicinity of the twisted Red Temple on near midafternoon of a sunny day, so either he had been unconscious for many hours—his own subjective feelings argued against that—or some major transformation in space or time had taken place.

      
The Prince’s mundane senses of smell and hearing, as well as his perceptions specially attuned to the airs of magic, indicated to him the presence of some large and very likely dangerous beasts in the nearby jungle, on both banks of the river. When he tried to pick out other sounds from the murmur of the river and the noise of insects, there were occasional low growls to be heard disturbingly near at hand, and feral snufflings deep in the brush. There was also a passing odor that reminded the boy of giant cats.

      
His repeated calls for Trilby had slowed and faltered to a stop, but now he tried her name again. The only result was some increase in the animal noises nearby.

      
Fortunately he wasn’t condemned to stand here until dawn; he still had his boat. Looking upstream, in the direction from which he had come, he could see nothing useful with his eyes, and in the world of magic could perceive practically nothing but a glow, distant but powerful, that could only represent the City. If he were to try going in that direction, he would have to run the risk of reentering the place from which he had just managed to escape. An ordinary person might be in no danger at all of entering the City, no matter which direction he chose to go; but Adrian, magically attuned as he was, might not be able to keep himself from entering its plane of existence once he came to the border.

      
Even gazing steadily in that direction was difficult for him now. When he did so he found that his senses were still half-dazzled by the power of the deadly confining magic that he had only just managed to escape, and of the elemental that had saved his life. Though at some point it had ceased to follow him downstream, that elemental was not yet dead; he could see its ongoing struggle with other, malignant powers still mounting like a fire on the horizon.

      
And if he, Adrian, did reenter the City of Wizards, the next exit he managed to find—assuming that he could stay alive long enough to find one—might well deposit him in some environment very much worse than this one.

      
His only remaining course of action was to take his boat on downstream.

      
Just on the verge of pushing off again in the canoe, Adrian paused. His ears had just brought him a new sound, a somewhat distant doglike howling. There was nothing intrinsically magical or very strange about the sound, but in the lonely darkness it was ominous. Adrian heard the howl again; it was getting closer.

      
A moment later, wading in the shallows, he had pushed off the canoe and swung himself into it, his weight balanced between the gunwales, as it glided out into the stream. Fortunately he’d had years of experience in handling small boats, including canoes. Tasavalta abounded in mountain streams and lakes, besides bordering on the sea.

      
Taking up the carved paddle again, the young Prince probed the darkness alertly with all his senses, trying to hold a downstream course as close as possible to the center of the stream.

      
And now that he was on the water again, this time with his mind clear—as far as he could tell—and all his senses functioning, he found something strangely attractive, soothing, about the river itself.

      
The stars of a moonless sky shimmered in the water beneath him. The canoe swiftly answered his least touch with the paddle; who did this craft belong to, anyway, and why had it been so conveniently available for him just when he needed it? He was still unable to detect anything in the way of any magical aura left about the boat by its previous usage or users. Well, that was not strictly true, perhaps; there were a few traces, the psychic analogues of smears and smudges, but nothing meaningful.

      
The question and its corollaries worried him. Had the boat’s availability, just when he needed it, been sheer accident? Or had it been purposefully arranged? If there had been no boat to carry him away, how might he have fared?

      
The howling came again, the distance at which it originated impossible to gauge. Still the Prince thought it might be following him, though he could not be sure on which bank of the narrow river it had its source.

      
Now Adrian remembered a brief mention by Trimbak Rao of certain carnivorous apes that infested a forest growing along one of the City’s edges. Those apes were known to be dangerous to humans, and were claimed by some to be fully as intelligent as messenger birds. In darkness and loneliness it was all too easy for the boy to imagine such a creature producing just such a howling sound.

      
Now, as he steered and propelled the canoe downstream, Adrian tried his best to achieve some mental or magical contact with Trimbak Rao. But that proved to be impossible. The magical glow of the City behind him still dominated the air and sky, partially dazzling his extra senses. Also, he was beginning to suspect that another kind of blockage had been imposed, as if by the same deadly enemy who had tried to trap him in the City.

      
Trying now to reconstruct the disaster that had almost overtaken him there, Adrian found that the cause of those events was still unclear. The one thing of which he could be absolutely sure was that the near disaster had been no accident. Some enemy of enormous power and subtle, murderous cunning had set out to kill or capture him—and Trilby, possibly. And in Trilby’s case the attempt might have succeeded.

      
Fighting down a brief renewed attack of panic, Adrian concentrated again on his progress downstream. The current was now bearing him swiftly through the darkness, and his occasional strokes of the paddle, meant to steer, added speed. But now, even as he began to take comfort in his rapid progress, the river broadened and the current accordingly slowed somewhat.

      
Probing the night as well as he was able, staring into a vague gap in a black shoreline, he decided that the river here was joined by some tributary stream almost as large as itself.

      
The psychic glare of the City at last began to fade noticeably behind him. Now Adrian, after a day’s journeying and the great exertions of trying to escape from the City’s dangers, found himself physically exhausted. The snug little boat, drifting in almost complete silence, provided the illusion at least of shelter and safety. Here the night air, still and damp, felt warmer than ever.

      
Deciding that he had better rest while he had the opportunity, he tied up his canoe to a snag, a half-sunken log protruding above the surface near midstream. Sleepily he murmured a minor spell he had found useful against marauding insects, and another intended to bring him wide awake at the approach of danger. Then he stretched himself out as comfortably as possible in the bottom of the boat and abandoned himself to slumber.

      
Stars and planets turned above his inert form, and gradually the sky in the east began to lighten. Once again before dawn the sound of howling came, still faint with distance, but possibly somewhat closer than before. The exhausted sleeper did not stir.

      
Full dawn with its bright light came at last, and with the light Adrian moved in the bottom of the boat. A moment later he sat up quickly, blinking at the day. Now, he thought,
at least I know which way is east.

      
The morning sky, partly cloudy, looked reassuringly normal. The river here flowed chocolate brown in daylight, and was not quite as wide as he had judged it to be in darkness. The dark green jungle, shrouding each bank beyond a narrow strip of mud, still looked well-nigh impenetrable even in full daylight. Now, in the upstream direction, the extrasensory glow of the City was superimposed upon the sun in Adrian’s perception. To him that glow still formed a threatening pulse of danger, tending to dominate both land and sky.

      
He scooped up river water in his hands and recited a short testing spell, while watching the tiny, soft mud particles beginning to settle out. There was no reaction to the spell, indicating that the water was safe to swallow.

      
After drinking of the river deeply—and returning to it in exchange some water of his own—Adrian untied his craft and resumed his downstream progress. He used the paddle as before, keeping the canoe away from either shore.

      
He was hungry now, and providing himself food by magic alone would be an undertaking somewhat more difficult and complicated than merely testing the water. He decided to try to feed himself by mundane methods alone, if that proved possible. If, without a knife, he could somehow sharpen a wooden spear, he could try some spear fishing. Or he might put a hand in the water and try magicking a fish to come within his reach.

      
Before he could quite decide on either effort, some recognizable wild fruit trees appeared, and he put in to shore to gather breakfast. Hunger dulled for the time being, he pushed on.

      
As the sun rose higher, Adrian began to feel its full heat. Digging into his memory, and applying a little thought and effort, he managed after a couple of false starts to create a spell that tanned his pale skin immediately, in such a way as to preserve him from the worst effects of the solar fire.

      
Hours passed. The river wound on, kilometer after kilometer, with no change in itself or in its banks. This jungle country, damp and hot, was vastly different from anything to which the boy had been accustomed, either near his home or in the vicinity of the workshop of Trimbak Rao.

      
Shortly after resuming his journey, Adrian thought that he heard last night’s howling once again. Whether the source was closer or more distant now was hard to say.

      
Except for the occasional sites where fruit trees grew, he had yet to discover any place on either shore that tempted him to land. Some of the dangers were obvious, taking the shape of thorn trees and wasps’ nests. Other perils were not so obvious, but Adrian had noted them. Here and there along both banks he observed the spoor of large animals, and in one tall tree he spotted a nest or crude sleeping platform such as he had heard was sometimes made by the carnivorous apes.