Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I Read online

  CHAPTER 3

  THE DAKKAW OF KRINTZ

  “Solve his riddles, escape his plans,

  Lest one remain, putty in his hands,

  Fly from Bisiguth before a bride he taketh,

  And so his vengeance he maketh . . .”

  —’Topical Fables of Sarch’, from Xiver’s New Contemporary Library.

  I

  Baus did not pause to belabour his predicament under Heagram Prison’s wall. He let his fingers claw free of the beobar’s trunk then launched himself away double-time, thrashing through the woods with no decorum.

  His legs were limber; his lungs were strong. He took to the moonlit gaps with the swiftness of an antelope. Through his glassy eyes he saw the mist muting the moonlight and shrouding his way through the tangle.

  A mournful horn blasted from nearby.

  Baus stopped short. With suspicious eyes he raked the unfamiliar gloom. A sound echoed from far away, reinforcements of some sort. The position of the blare was inexact; but he guessed his pursuers had reached the better part of the wall that faced the sea.

  Too close! He plunged deeper into the forest, preparing for an attack. The idea was to elude any new threat, but a crisp snapping of twigs brought him spinning about, drawing his tiny blade. He strained to discern the source.

  “No need to fear!” a pellucid voice called out from the darkness. “It is I, a friend.”

  The declaration prompted Baus to release his white grip on the hilt of his gladius. The voice was melodic, a woman’s rich soft voice, clear as a bell. As the seconds passed, Baus discerned a robed figure in plain acolyte’s garb, knee-high and subdued. A small hand and cowl partially covered her face—the same he had seen in the yard, a face unfettered by malice or devilry. She appeared harmless, trotting from behind a massive trunk, with a small white hand tucked in a loose velvet sleeve, lifted in peaceful greeting.

  “Ulisa?” Baus peered closer. His own murmur seemed comic in his ears.

  She approached on calm feet. She was gorgeous in every way, graced with a pure presence that was difficult to describe. She exuded a magical litheness; her figure was bathed in light, an emanation that captivated him. Not for random was it that he took an instant like to this creature, despite her absurd size. She was no more than three feet high. Nor was the truthful innocence of her aura or sense of arbitrary power any diminishing quality. She scrutinized him just as curiously; he felt a keen stupefaction, for the wet garments revealed her contours in evocative light, hardly for the worse. Even so, she shivered slightly in the chillness of the night.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “I am Ulisa—my friends call me Ulisa the Utilitarian.”

  “Baus of Heagram,” Baus answered.

  The rest of the distance was small and he crossed it in a trice. With a graceful ease she appraised him with blinking eyes. “I am indebted to you, Baus. The like is not common in these parts. Let not some false judgment of character betray me . . . so please accept this token of my thanks for warning me against that rogue. Aurimag is a cur. He was ready to dispatch me with prejudice! If you hadn’t cried out—I might not have fared as well as I have.” Her voice seemed to falter on the edge of tense memory.

  Baus shook his head with good-nature. “I offered an avenue of escape, no more, as would any charitable citizen.”

  “That you did,” replied Ulisa heartily. Her smile revealed a natural delight. “But I think you are more cavalier than your humility may suggest.”

  “You saved yourself—from the dissolute rascal.”

  Ulisa’s face quivered from some painful memory. “The degeneracy of that villain has created much grief for me! Dark days are upon us, Baus. His ruthless deeds must come to an end. Look at me—shrunken to a child. All creatures in the universe are in jeopardy.”

  Baus blinked. The absolutism seemed a trifle melodramatic. “I hear that name, ‘Aurimag’ more and more.”

  “The name is a mockery!” she spat.

  “I know—it means ‘Golden Mage’.”

  Ulisa gave her sandal a stamp. “Where have you heard that? ’Tis ironic that he has ruined any chances for all things ‘golden’ in this life.”

  “Riddles to me,” grunted Baus. Gesturing to the sprawling forest, he waved with a sense of urgency. “I suppose we must fly from here. ’Tis ill fortune if Captain Graves discovers us in these precincts.”

  Ulisa agreed. She allowed her new friend to escort her closer to the looming bog. Snatching her arm, he half dragged her into the forest gloom before she could frame a protest. A frosty sheen glazed the foliage, impelling the woman to jump and hop. Logs and stones proved cumbersome in the brake. She urged him to slow down.

  Baus griped: “Let us hasten! It bodes ill that Weavil has been seized by that lunatic. He is my friend and has been transformed into a wretched midget like yourself.”

  “Woe upon woe! But hold up, I am no hurdler.” She cocked her head. “The small man who was fleeing next to me when I was dashed to the ground, this is Weavil?”

  “’Tis.”

  Ulisa’s lips showed a brief quiver. “The poor man has been transformed into a homunculus by an arcane containment like myself. Weavil has fallen under the pall of Aurimag’s sorcery!—as have many others. It happened for me in Lune’s glade—not far from Mismerion castle. So it passed likewise for Woisper—and Salmeister—both neomancers of the Mismerion Order. They were bewitched . . . in the upper precincts of the Moon tower . . . Lured by Aurimag’s sly temptation, typical of his craft. They were fooled.” She gave her neck a painful twist. “To remedy the situation is no easy undertaking. But that is where I hasten.”

  Baus’s brows arched. “Oh, and where is that?”

  Ulisa peeled off her cowl and gave a cryptic smile. Baus saw her hair was golden as silk, enchanting to behold even wet and tousled.

  “To revive the Circle and repair myself to normal stature,” she stated. She seemed careful not to stimulate Baus’s interest in her. “Woisper, Salmeister, Adelyheim the Healer, Kazzasius the Projector, Ahrion the Astrologer—all shall collaborate in the pursuit of justice! We are neomancers!—Aurimag shall fall, and wrongs shall be righted. We shall clip the dastard’s wings—master him like the cur he is! Returning to Mismerion we will install ourselves as proper lords of the Circle. We shall build our potency, create a new order, revive the glory of old!”

  Baus believed the presumption lofty but voiced words that the quest was certainly a noble enterprise. “If Aurimag is half as diabolical as you claim, I doubt you will succeed.” He frowned at his own forecast and pulled at his scraggly beard. He felt it imprudent to relay the news that Weavil’s transformation, according to Nuzbek, could not be remedied for fifty years, if the magicker was telling the truth.

  The wail of a horn menaced the forest nearby. It seemed as if their recent mobilization had not proven satisfactory.

  Baus growled, “I have just learned of the Circle from another source—a certain ‘Trimestrius’ of Desenion.”

  Ulisa’s mouth hung agape. “Trimestrius?” She rustled her gown in awe. “He is alive?” A glint of hope shone palpably in her eyes.

  “’Twas he who loosed you from your jar.”

  Ulisa’s face swelled with pride. “I don’t doubt it . . . Were there others?”

  Baus gave his head a dour shake. “They are bottled. Now in Aurimag’s custody.”

  Ulisa made a crestfallen sound. “I must make haste!”

  Baus looked about doubtfully. The bramble and roots formed a daunting mossy barrier. The forest, no less, seemed a complex prison and the undergrowth a damp and adder-like tangle. “To where?” he croaked. “Grumboar is an unforgiving mistress. See for yourself. Your comrades remain captives of the malignant Nuzbek. At this moment he flees by air, a freakish sort on a parachute. He eludes those who are surely out to murder him—they will murder us too unless we are quick with our feet.”

  The pearly whites of Ulisa’s eyes glittered with animosity.

  Baus pul
led the midget along with speed. The two coursed grimly through the underbrush while Baus dodged awkwardly away from yet another set of distant horns.

  The bracken became unruly; a choke of spine-weed reared in his path, fern and fungus to the side. The north wall had tumbled behind in a wash of mist, now little more than a dim luminescence seen through the arms of the uncompromising forest. The going was tough yet Baus urged them on to new speed. With deliberate strides, he hauled Ulisa to his side and the two plunged recklessly into the woods.

  Coils of mist hung in unfriendly mats on the ground. Sprawling branches hindered their passage. They felt their way, eyeing gnarled roots and aged trees without cheer. Boughs seemed to wrap about them, to whisper, like human shades. Grumboar, ‘the forest of murmurs’, seemed a tangle of endless trunks, ever limp, mossy and damp, forever splashed in deep shadow and buoyant fog.

  He shrugged aside the eeriness and plunged deeper into the hollows. Black shadows seemed to be stained a slightly plum colour. The moon’s cool shimmer glared bravely through the leaves.

  No sign of Nuzbek was in evidence. The spooky atmosphere grew only more disquieting: phantom shadows mixed with deep murmurings of forest secrets. There was a closeness here of watchfulness that engulfed all thoughts and swallowed hopes.

  Past a jade-tinted pool they stumbled like ghosts. Strange animals lurked in the gaps: large birds with shimmering legs, horned frogs eager to croak and shine their glazed eyes. Ever did the trespassers search for signs of Nuzbek, but they found none. The villain had utterly disappeared.

  Ulisa seemed the worse for her efforts. Being entombed for so long in a brine-brimmed jar had not helped her condition. She sensed the inevitable and staggered to a halt. “I cannot take another step, Baus!” She dropped to her knees in exhaustion. “The forest harbours mysteries which I can’t conceive.” Her eyes misted, her hands shook slightly. The neomancer drifted into a strange trance, as if guided by an inner calling.

  Minutes passed. In the interim, Baus’s impatience grew. Tall beobar towered on four fronts in an unnerving wall.

  Ulisa snapped herself alert; she urged them on toward an open space deeper in the woods that promised respite from the closeness of Grumboar. A sizeable clearing with boundaries vague and solemn showed the ground soft and wet—an obvious swamp.

  Baus was unsure of the neomancer’s intent lingering here, yet he was glad to be out of the stifling confines of the forest, able to breathe somewhat.

  The neomancer set herself down on a moss-ridden log and in a queer voice, voiced ominous words: “Aurimag eludes us for sinister reasons. His cunning has grown; during the age I have been entombed as a trophy doll, he has become more depraved. Let us rest here—I need quiet—by this pool, by this glade . . .”

  Baus humoured her. Overlooking the misty reach he sat brooding on his misfortune. Cattails dwindled at the fringe of the tussocked pool in faint moonlight. Deep within the pool, he saw a cluster of deadheads huddled in profusion: grey-mottled trunks with half rotted stumps. The pool’s thin gleam played beams on a frog which thrummed. Leaping from lily pad to pad, it spread ripples out upon the water before submerging. The starry sky spread out its jewels, making Baus feel somewhat insignificant, enhanced by the profoundness of the sky.

  The silence deepened. A plaintive-sounding horn split the darkness—causing Baus to clench fists.

  He broke the eeriness. “Something does not add up in all this talk about Aurimag. A rogue, yes—but certainly not the utter despot you describe. Why do you seek him out, as if he were the deadliest villain on earth?”

  Ulisa spoke in grim fervour. “This ‘Nuzbek’ as you name him—is a powerful enchanter—he and Aurimag are the same.”

  Baus scoffed, “’Tis hard to believe.”

  Ulisa murmured, “But you must believe it.”

  “As you wish.”

  Ulisa said thoughtfully, “Once he was a powerful sorcerer, though less wise than most. When old Cascnus the Theosopher died, he applied for a position to the Synod—as did Llonon the Younger. It happened a long time ago, and I, senior member of the Circle, was present, along with others. Woisper, Salmeister and Barbirius, for example, who granted the two contenders an audience. Ah, what an august assembly that was!” Her eyes misted, as if a glimpse of the past was too much to bear. “It was at Mismerion, in our pillared Hall, in the days of carefree and light temperament.

  “Llonon, a budding neomancer, was first to launch his grand feat—a dancing lights and flame show. The like had never been seen before in our keep. Such luminescence! Such fires!—’twas revolutionary for one so young and brimming with talent. Neither radiating heat nor harm, his forms made play, and yet were amazing vignettes of illusion, exploding rainbow showers of tones of colour. How they filled the hall of Mismerion with delight and wonder! I remember it as if it was yester-eve: Llonon was dressed all in his finery, a mannerly, dapper young man with the clever grace of a veteran, twirling and snapping the shapes, as they formed faces and features of the past: pilgrims, kings, martyrs, peons, tradesmen. All spoke in their own native voice, injecting a phrase of knowledge, a quotation, a witticism, a euphemism, even a tragic anecdote. His conjurations dwindled to whispers, then rearranged themselves into constellations, growing in size and wonder.”

  Ulisa’s smile warmed in the moonlight. “It appeared as if we were moving toward a single star, a distant luminous orb that commanded the orbits of the satellites! We fled on in our wonder to encounter another star system. We were finally whisked to the center of our own galaxy, at incomprehensible speeds. Unquenchable fires shone there with a brilliance almost impairing to the eyes!

  “Then a boom, a sudden wracking explosion—a brief start—and a juddering jar. We were flung back into the perplexity of our Hall! Llonon took a bow, with larkish eyes glistening with mischief.”

  “Impressive!” muttered Baus.

  Ulisa gave a contented sigh. “Aurimag became inflamed at the display. In secret fury he flung a hex so wicked that the young illusionist ran to the fountain gulping like a fish. Members of the Circle were at odds trying to figure out what happened. Our counterspell indicators indicated that he had cast a spell to make his mouth eternally dry. Barbirius the Bellicose opted for Aurimag’s dismissal. Salmeister the Saturnine was in accord. Pizor the Polemicist, Dious the Philosopher and Maitor the Moralist seconded the motion but Woisper convinced his colleagues to hold off.

  Ulisa paused. “I say with anything but praise that Aurimag’s powers had grown since we had last known him as a fledgling aspirant. Ever since he had taken pilgrimage to the Nderian hills west of Mismerion and had spoken to the wizened old shamans there who roamed the misty reaches, he had changed—after that he retired to the stark quietude of his cave by the Lim. He brooded there and experimented with fey things. Years passed and he came to demonstrate his magic of new thresholds, thought lost by all but our Elders. Aurimag’s extravaganza was a demonstration of teleportation to another realm. With the help of an assistant, he arranged a great rat on a podium, a creature dishevelled and miserable, caged in a metal mesh, over which he placed a mica shield. The rat was obviously under some spell. Spreading various potions and elixirs of pungency, he muttered an arcane verse which allowed us a view of that barbaric podium showing the rodent to have disappeared. He voiced a cryptic saying, singing fragments of ghastly songs. Blasphemous, these utterances exemplified all kinds of satanic import and accompanied with his arrogant bluster, included a flugelhorn performance and a hornpipe dirge which were so appallingly out of character that we blanched. As ridiculous as the exploits seemed, we endured them, perhaps only from sheer etiquette. What was more the gathering felt utterly scandalized, particularly Salmeister, who held a distinct hatred for Aurimag and challenged him to prove that he had enacted anything more than a dissembling of a disappearing rodent.

  “Aurimag levelled his gaze upon the old conjuror and shot a quivering finger in the air, tapping it down on his empty cage, thus imploring a single fell wor
d—

  “‘Gloriglastonifix!’

  “The rat returned, not as a harmless rodent, but as a big black beast, fey beyond imagining. It had a monstrous ten-foot high polyp-ridden hide and four gyrating heads. The elephantine snout skidded around like a mallet, knocking out the lamps like thunder-blasts and snared Onzo the Optimist in a trunk. Aurimag ignored the destruction, even as it inflicted a near mortification upon poor Onzo. It was a demon, of course, drawn from the Zamariel netherworlds. I daren’t name it. Unmercifully the thing stomped about the chamber on rhinoceros-like legs. Aurimag stood there, cackling like a hyena, unintimidated by the devil he had conjured. Onzo would have died there had not Adelyheim the Healer administered a healing curative. Others in our company called forth our protective spells and charms, and at the very least we immobilized the demon before it could do further damage.

  “Aurimag laughed in a most disdainful voice: ‘You cringing dawcocks! I have conveyed this thing from the dismal past to the present—a snapshot which you have witnessed and abhorred. Perhaps this is what shall walk the earth in the future? Perhaps not. I defy you to claim such a feat rivalled by any other. Let Llonon and his tawdry spectacles drown in risibility compared to mine!’

  “Woisper spoke in his gravest voice: ‘Aurimag, you are a pompous twit! Your neomancy has grown to capable effect, granted, but you have raised nothing more than a demon. A frightful abomination!—of low standing too. You have transgressed beyond the Code of Neomancer Ethics! You must be punished!

  “Aurimag mocked Woisper. ‘You, of all Neons*[Footnote: The neomancers of old, precursors to the modern day neomancers], should know that hypocrisy is a gift. What of all the failed experiments, the hushed accidents and disasters that you personally have wrought upon innocent creatures of the forests while acquiring this knowledge of your ‘craft’? The bestial experiments foisted on the animals and birds in the forests not far from the Brauvn?—you merged their life essences with those of lesser intelligence. Human too, if rumour be correct. What of those artificial species you manufactured in your tubs in the murky cellars? Do you not know the walls you built in the Branx forest no longer hold the ‘Wickles’, as folk call them, and in the darkest hours of the night, they slip through the cracks and haunt the forests of the Lim? Your ‘Sanctuary’, your pretentious Synod, is slowly disintegrating. Even the crass experimentation is risible. I call you the worst hypocrite of all, Woisper, and you can wallow in your sanctimony! Fade and dwindle to mediocrity, be proud of your little rituals and pedagogies while I shine. While your life passes as a mere fading shadow, I shall be on the avant-garde edge of wonder, eulogized in the texts of history!’