The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (12 page)

The Great Audience Chamber of the High Lord of the Baraduhne was vast, with 13 tall stone pillars down each side supporting a vaulted ceiling high overhead. The pillars were large—it would take three men holding hands to reach around any one of them—and deeply fluted with gold mined from this very mountain inlaid up their long length.  Rich gold and dark magenta tapestries lined the walls behind the columns, depicting great battles and past victories of the Baraduhne.  The black marble floor was laced with flecks of quartz, and inlaid with silver in the form of a large rune of warding that stretched from one side of the great hall to the other.  Anyone approaching the throne would have to cross that rune.  If they were armed, whatever weapon they carried would burst into white-hot flame, incinerating the weapon, and likely the one who carried it.

There were hidden alcoves along the sides of the chamber for the High Lord’s guards and the ever-present Watchers whose job it was to observe the overt and hidden words and actions of all who came for audience before the Great Sorcerer. Carved from the mountain itself, this room along with the entire palace was heated by conduits and baffles that brought warm air up through deep shafts that tapped into the very fires of the earth far below. The room was lit by hundreds of silver sconces backed by silver mirrors that held gas flames fed from the depths. Three large chandeliers spaced down the center of the chamber also provided light so that every corner was illuminated. The acoustics of the room were cleverly designed so that pronouncements from the throne could be heard clearly to the far reaches of the great hall.

“As I have foretold, Kadeen” the Great Sorcerer was saying, “the wizard Gilladhe has been destroyed. Just as for ages I have felt his life across the mountains and the barrier that he created in the mouth of the pass, I have now felt his death.  Soon we will claim the lands that he protected.  No longer will we be confined to this corner of the empire by our enemies to the north.”

“That is auspicious news indeed, Great One,” Kadeen answered, bowing. “Our forces are ready, we can move our engineers and work crews through to begin clearing the pass at first light.”

“Not yet, my faithful servant, patience is yet required,” Adham al Dharr responded. “As I anticipated, the wizard had an apprentice. He has foolishly revealed himself to me this very night. I met his spirit at the bridge, and nearly took him in his pride but in the final instant he eluded me. But it does not matter. If your men have done as I commanded, they will confine him in the dungeons of Carraghlaoch where he will be unable to touch his power. Then we can add to our forces on the other side and proceed with our plans. With the threat from the north, we dare not risk a war on two fronts. Once the trigitch is destroyed and that barrier to magic has been removed from the pass, we can move unopposed.”

“Is the apprentice a man of power, Great Lord?” Kadeen asked.

“Yes, but young. He wields great power and is sealed to the winds, but I sensed surprise when he saw me. He was not well prepared for our meeting. When we meet in flesh, I will have him easily; then we will see how his powers may serve me.”

Yeva was as stone upon the floor. She ceased to breath when she heard those words, but there was no gasp, no movement, no indication of any kind to the Watchers in this room that she had been anything but unseeing and unhearing. Even her heart beat, beyond the three beats that raced after hearing of the doom that was approaching, was low and steady, totally under control.

Yeva had been taken from her mother by the Assassins Guild at the age of three to begin training in the physical and mental disciplines required for her future. The training was constant, exacting and brutal, and most of her companions along the way had either been killed, seriously maimed, or lost in some alternate pathway of the mind; but through the 15 years of intensive training Yeva had excelled, avoiding the falls, the garrotes and blades of enemies and the seductive mental traps encountered in her meditations, and was now held high in the secret rankings of her profession. Kadeen had purchased her from the Guild because of her ranking, and also because he enjoyed gathering beautiful things around him. Even more, he enjoyed the envy of those who admired but could not possess the beautiful things that he gathered.

As Yeva had advanced, mastering her body, her surroundings and the use of weapons, the training had become more and more mental. The ability to not be seen, or to be seen where she was not, required a focused mind. To climb a vertical wall where there were no visible handholds, to move across a sanded floor leaving no sign of her passing, to soundlessly pass through a closed door without seeming to open it, these required a fixed concentration and close contact with the Realm of Infinite Possibilities. Yeva could not perform magic the way her master Kadeen or the Great Sorcerer Adham al Dharr could perform magic. Yeva was merely mortal, but through years of effort she had honed the ability to examine and use the Realm of Infinite Possibilities. Within that Realm, there were realities in which the seamless wall was not seamless, the sanded floor was not sanded, and the closed door was open.

Time flowed like a river with all of its branches and tributaries within the Realm, and Yeva used that fact during her evening meditations to examine possible courses of action and to consider future dangers. Little was clear when the Realm was used in this way, including the certainty or even the chronology of events as they might apply to her bodily existence. Hazards that she foresaw within the Realm were merely possibilities in her daily life, and a warning that she perceived there might relate to actions about to take place, actions for which the conditions would not exist for some time, or actions that would never be triggered at all by events in her real world. The greater the danger in the real world, the more likely it was to be perceived out of its normal time in the Realm. With all of its uncertainty, a disciplined unemotional examination of future possibilities could often be used to favorably influence the flow of possible outcomes.

Four times in the past three years Yeva had received the same warning or premonition of a great upheaval.  Little had been clear during these seeings, which indicated to Yeva that the possibilities were buried in great uncertainty in both time and probability, but on all four occasions, she had known without knowing why that if the requisite conditions aligned themselves in her world, she herself would be in a position of great leverage and great danger. She had glimpsed as if through a heavy smoke two dominant possibility-streams flowing from this nexus, and she had known that her actions or inactions could tip the balance and send the world rushing down either one of the two.  Further, she had been certain that some form of likely destruction lay down either path.  On all four occasions, her concentration had shattered and she had been thrown out of the Realm of Infinite Possibilities, something that did not happen to her since the early days of her training. In each case she had been left nauseous, cold with sweat, and with the thought echoing in her head: “A
n old power approaches—he is sealed to the winds
.”

She reviewed the words of the High Lord Adham al Dharr: “…young.  He wields great power and is sealed to the winds,” he had said.  Could this be the advent of destruction that she had foreseen in the Realm?  On reflection, it did not seem likely.  The Great Sorcerer had clearly said that the one who was coming was young and ill prepared.  To Yeva, that last fact was reviewed with the greatest contempt.  She had trained unceasingly for most of her twenty-two years of life to become what she was and she had no sympathy for those who entered any situation unprepared.  Was it possible, though, that against the odds events were building towards the fatal nexus of which she had been warned?  If reality was beginning to form around that possibility, then the chaos related to that potential future in the Realm of Infinite Possibilities would begin to gel.  Both the possibilities and the related consequences of actions connected to the events to come would gradually reveal themselves as probabilities narrowing down to that nexus as alternate paths of evasion became less likely.

Yeva could enter the Realm to allow potential futures to wash over her with just a few minutes of focused meditation, but she dared not do it in this chamber. The risks were far too high. If the nexus of destruction was in fact approaching and she reacted to her visions in any external way, or worse yet was cast back out of the Realm, the Watchers would surely see. The Great Sorcerer could easily develop an interest in her should signs of her distress in his presence be brought to his attention, and those that interested the High Lord often satisfied that interest under the skilled hands of his torturers. She would have to wait. If the danger was truly returning with the raiding party sent through the pass, then it was still some way off and there should still be time.

Yeva returned her attention to her master. “Are you certain that my instructions were understood precisely?” the High Lord was asking Kadeen.

“Yes, Great Sorcerer. Captain Saglam knows well to reclaim the texts that were stolen by the wizard Gilladhe, once the spell that you created was unleashed against him.”

“And the wizard’s staff, and the wizard’s journal?” Adham al Dharr interrupted impatiently.

“Yes, High Lord,” Kadeen responded, bowing deeply, “the staff and journal will also be held for you. And as instructed, the entire population of the wizard’s pathetic village will be held, securely bound, so that his apprentice cannot escape your great justice.”

“It had better be as you say, Kadeen,” Adham al Dharr said ominously. “Many years and many useful lives have been sacrificed to finally destroy Gilladhe and to free us from this confinement. You will join Captain Saglam hanging from my wall, old friend, if some carelessness of yours should cause this great venture to fail.”

“As you say, High Lord,” Kadeen answered, bowing lower.

“Leave me now,” Adham al Dharr ordered, turning away.

Kadeen dropped to his knees and briefly pressed his forehead to the floor before rising and backing ten paces. Turning, he then strode deliberately down the length of the audience chamber towards the vaulted entrance.

Yeva, who had been expected to be unseeing and unhearing in the presence of the High Lord, was nonetheless also expected to see and to hear the advance of her master and to resume her responsibility for his life once he departed this room. Before he reached her, she sprang lightly to her slippered feet and preceded him out the door.  She scanned the grand hall in both directions, then took up her station on her master’s left side, two paces back, as he passed her.  The loose fitting silk blouse and pants that she wore gathered tightly at her wrists and ankles, allowed her excellent freedom of movement. They also showed off her tall, shapely form as the finely woven fabric flowed against her body while she strode behind her master down the hall.  This was not lost on Kadeen when he glanced in her direction, nor was the resultant veiled admiration and envy in the eyes of others lost on Kadeen.

Kadeen, who was a little man, a good three inches shorter than Yeva, slight of frame with a narrow face and a hooked nose that was broken when he was a child and never healed quite straight, was a collector of rare and beautiful things which he took great pleasure in displaying before his rivals.

At the end of the hall, they turned right towards Kadeen’s apartments. As they rounded the corner, a servant failed to move quickly enough to get out of their way, and Kadeen struck her in the face with the back of his hand as he went by.  Yeva could have easily moved forward to prevent the entire encounter, but she had judged immediately that the servant was no threat to her master, and Kadeen would not have appreciated her interference.  He invariably left the presence of the High Lord in an evil humor, and it was better, she thought, that he take it out on an inattentive servant rather than on her.  The things that he did were rarely fatal, in fact they were normally trivial compared to the treatment that she had routinely received in training, but they were still humiliating and painful and best to be avoided.

As they approached Kadeen’s apartments, Yeva moved ahead, opened the door, quickly scanned the rooms for threat and moved aside allowing her master to storm past. She closed the door after him, and took up her position inside standing next to it. By extending her awareness to the door, she could easily detect the subtle vibrations of anyone approaching down the hall and provide her master with ample warning. With contact firmly established with the door and surrounding walls, even another of the Guild would find it difficult to approach without Yeva’s knowledge.

Kadeen shouted for tea, sending the slave who had been kneeling in the corner scurrying off to the kitchens, then cast a pattern of privacy about the room.  The spell always sent a wave of nausea through Yeva as it cut across her lines of concentration to the door, but the feeling passed quickly and did not further interfere with her contact.

“Hang me from his wall, will he?” muttered Kadeen in outrage, pacing across the room and back. “Saglam had better not fail me. With the Staff of the Winds in my hands we’ll finally see who ends up hanging from the wall. But first he’ll pay me back for every slight, every humiliation,” he muttered as he paced. “I’ll not be gentle as I drain him of his power. The screams and pleading of the four mages that he consumed to construct the spell of undoing used against that dog Gilladhe will be soft music compared to the anguish I will wrench from him.

“And curse Gilladhe!  May the fires of Phasarat burn his soul forever.  If it weren’t for his vile trigitch I’d be able to cross the Deep and not be dependent upon Saglam and those gorn dogs.  I warned al Dharr that Gilladhe’s death would not undo that beast.  Nothing short of draining the Deep entirely will unseat that vile creature and allow one of magic to cross that moat.  Once I dispose of the apprentice and secure the staff, we can turn the gorn loose on whatever farmers are left, set the engineers and the slaves to clearing the way, and the lands to the east will finally be mine for the taking.”