Flame Winds (13 page)

“Thine, my mouse,” he said softly, “will be the task of gnawing this lion’s ropes when the trumpet blasts for the second time. But let the carpets down not too swiftly, or the spears are apt to break. If they do, there will be no saving that neck of thine!”

Bourtai stretched his neck and fumbled it with his clawed fingers. “Aye, master, they shall drop slowly, but I do not understand this magic of thine.”

“If thou didst,” Wan Tengri said dryly, “‘twould be no magic. Wait for the second trumpet blast.”

He turned back down the steps then, to find the princess waiting, white-faced and frightened, in the great main hall. Beyond the walls was the turmoil of men’s angry voices. Her hands fluttered out to his.

“Thy magic, my lord. Quickly!”

Wan Tengri smiled, though the muscles across his shoulders were stiffening for battle, and his fiery head was thrown back with the challenge of death. “Nay, magic cannot be hurried, princess,” he said gently. “Did it not take seventeen years to break the spell that held thee bound a child?”

The princess’ eyes softened. “Yet there are other magics that take less time and other spells!”

“There are those,” Wan Tengri said harshly, “that last for a day.” He crossed to the armor where a spider had nested, burnished now, and swiftly fitted on cuirass and helmet. “When the trumpet sounds the second time, princess, do thou open wide the outlet of that wondrous spring of thy father’s. Thy magic, added to mine, will sweep the vermin from thy doorstep—I hope.”

He bore his armor lightly as he bounded up the stairs once more to the room where he had slept, and there girded on his sword and caught his newly strung bow in his hand. If today the wizards broke the truce with assault of arrows, there would be an answer worthy of them! He strode to the balcony, stared down at the arrow-pierced corpse of the princess’ man. The last rays of the sun gilded his death-drawn face.

“And you waited seventeen years for this,” he said. “Well, mayhap, I shall find some such answer today!”

He caught up the man’s trumpet and stepped to the verge of the balcony where the white scarf was spread again. Already the sun was half swallowed by the Suntai hills. He set the trumpet to his mouth and the blast he blew with unfamiliar lips wavered and broke, roared loud and strong. Silence fell, but there was laughter in the nearest line of the faces of the guards. So they did not like his trumpeting? Wan Tengri scowled down at them.

“I
am the man,”
he cried. “I speak for the princess. Where are these motley wizards of thine?”

The ranks of the guards parted then, and he saw the masked figures of the four wizards who still survived. They stood silently, and Wan Tengri, scanning the army warily, saw men with drawn and ready bows hidden near them. Aye, he had expected that.

“Fakirs of Kasimer,” he sent his thundering voice down at them, “three of thy number have gone. To you four who remain, for a little while, I give the message of the princess. You will withdraw your armies and disband them and surrender yourselves to her mercy. Refuse, and you die!”

Jeering laughter and shouts broke from the multitude and, amid their ranks, a trumpet sang clearly. Wan Tengri cursed, then grinned wolfishly as a thick flight of arrows winged toward his balcony. Themselves had done it, had signaled the releasing of his magic!

As he whipped his own stout bow into line and notched an arrow to the gut, the last red lip of the sun flicked below the verge of the hills and there was only the upleaping flames from the moat, tossing their red menace upon the faces of the host. By it, the four masked figures stood out boldly, but the ranks were already closing about them at the signal of that trumpet blast. The great bow twanged as swiftly as hand could notch arrow, and six shafts lanced downward in an eye wink of time.

A guard sprang in front of one masked figure with an upthrown shield—and went down, his shield pinned to his skull. The second arrow, following in that same groove, struck down through a masked wizard’s throat and drove him, kicking, to the ground. But the other shafts found lesser flesh. Wan Tengri felt the bite of an arrow in his left arm and cursed as he fell back out of range. He could do little enough now. His arrows were best saved, for when his magic began to work—

His fingers groped for the arrow in his arm while his eyes peered upward where the most distant light of the flames showed. Yes, his carpet scrolls were unrolling, reaching down. He peered warily over the side. The flames of the moat were leaping higher. Bourtai and the princess had done their work. His eyes scowled down at the arrow and he snapped off its head. His teeth set and he ripped the shaft free of his flesh with a curse. Better that it bleed for a while. He started into his chamber, yet paused for a while. There was a sighing in all the high air, a sighing that changed to a rising moan, that presently would shriek and howl. The flame wind had begun to blow!

One more glance he threw at the uncurling carpets. They were dropping swiftly now, for Bourtai would have ducked inside at the first faint puff of the flame wind. They bellied like sails beside the mast of the tower and, like sails, too, they would curl the flame wind down into the heart of the city. The high-leaping flames of the moat would ride with it, and—The first hot gush of that down-turned wind eddied about Wan Tengri. The heat of it plugged his nostrils, clawed at his vitals with tiny, hot talons. Strangling, retching from that first touch, Wan Tengri staggered into the tower and slammed shut the door of the balcony. He leaned against it, panting, and slowly he began to smile. They had not lied about the power of the flame wind!

He raced to the steps and Bourtai was clattering his sandals down from the heights. Below him, he heard the clear call of the princess’ voice, and the one servitor who remained to her ran close at her heels.

“Thy magic, my lord?” called the princess. “Does it—succeed?”

“That is a thing we shall see,” Wan Tengri said, with a tension that mocked his calm tones. He led the way upward to where a crystal globe was let into the tower wall, and through it they peered out into the madness of the Court of the Fountain. The high-leaping flames no longer clustered about the tower, but, blown downward by the fierce, turned pressure of the flame wind, guttered out in lancing spears of crimson and gold across the floor of the court itself. The flame winds of the evening, sweeping high across the city, were being caught by the upreaching tower, and the sail of carpet scrolls. Turned downward from their level course across the city, they swept down the carpets, down the side of the tower, and thence across the moat of burning crude oil. Like a mighty blow torch fed by the superheated winds deflected by his carpets, the gushing flames fled in flattened, angry tongues across the courtyard. A windrow of blackening bodies fringed the moat and, farther away where the outmost ranks of the ten thousand had stood, men were fighting savagely to escape. Swords whirled and flashed above their heads, and death crept toward them. Men writhed to the ground where the flames licked and beyond their reach, other men were staggering, clutching at their throats with maddened hands.

The princess laughed aloud and clapped her hands in glee. “Thy magic works, my lord. My enemies die by the hundred, by the thousand.” Her fingers bit into Wan Tengri’s arm.

Bourtai dropped to his knees and beat his forehead on the floor. He pressed his writhing, ancient lips to Wan Tengri’s foot. “Thou art the greatest wizard of them all, master. Forgive thy slave that ever he dared to doubt or to oppose thee.”

Wan Tengri peered down at that scene of slaughter with sunken, bitter eyes, and there was no smile on his lips, no laughter in his heart. Yes, they died, and there had been brave men in that army, such men as even Prester John would have joyed to cross swords with. They died—horribly. Wan Tengri jerked his arm from under the princess’ hand, and his foot from the grip of Bourtai, and went heavily, slowly down the stairs. His sword clanked against his thigh, and the familiar bite of the bow-string was across his throat.

“Prester John, magician,” he said thickly. “Magician, ha!”

Outside, he could hear nothing save the shriek of the wind and the bellowing fire. The screams of the dying were mercifully blotted out, or had long ago strangled in their throats. The air was heavy with the scorching of stone and the reek of the moat fire; no worse stenches came, since the wind swept them out over the city. He stood in the wide main corridor on braced legs and waited. Above, the princess still shrieked in glee, as he should be doing. These men had slaughtered Kassar, and many another stout soldier—and they stood between him and wealth. He shrugged his shoulders, lifted his head, and Bourtai was cowering before him.

“Master, the last of them is dead or fled,” he gasped. “Never has there been such slaughter as with this magic of thine. But now, while they flee, we should strike. We must march to the Temple of Ahriman and seize the treasury.”

Wan Tengri managed a smile. “So, one more lie is revealed, small wizard. Didst know where the treasure was hidden.”

“It is thy treasury now, lord.”

Wan Tengri grunted. “I have earned it. Go to my chamber and wilt find two pots of black, stinking liquid. Empty them on some part of the carpets and throw a torch against the spot. We will soon be rid of the flame wind, now we have no need of it.”

“But the fires about the tower, master?” cried Bourtai. “How may we pass them by?”

Wan Tengri said shortly: “Thou didst help my magic there, Bourtai. Canst not recall?”

“Master, I helped thee? Nay, we did but throw some salt bags into the moat.” His face was eager, pleading. “How can that be?”

Wan Tengri rolled his shoulders. “Salt melts in boiling water,” he said curtly. “It melts quite rapidly. There were many bags, else even the cold water on which flows this magic black brew of the princess would have taken care of it long ago. Within the hour, the moat will suck itself dry again. Flame will race along these salt tunnels of thine, mayhap, and certain buildings will be destroyed. But marble does not carry flame and the fire will not last long. Go, rid me of my magic carpets, and then tell the princess to put on her state robes.” He grinned sourly. “She will walk on the bodies of her enemies to Ahriman’s temple. She’ll have to—else never again cross the Court of the Magic Fountain!”

Bourtai’s feet scampered like the claws of a rat up the marble steps and, presently, there was a new, higher leaping of the flames from the moat and the sigh of the flame wind lifted and became remote. The stench of burned flesh came through clearly and Wan Tengri’s lips drew thin. Tomorrow, or the next day, he would begin to boast of this exploit, how his single-handed magic had slain ten thousand men. But he would not need to boast. The wandering troubadours would pick up the theme, and for centuries, perhaps, or as long as a father’s memory passed on to his son, the story would be told to the whining of one-string fiddles. Wan Tengri’s back stiffened. Prester John had made a name to be proud of, an empire in the East. It was no small exploit that, single-handed, he had turned back the wizard hordes.

He began slowly to pace back and forth across the corridor and presently he was humming through his nose. The ceremonially slow step of the princess on the stairs pulled his head that way and he caught his breath in admiration. She was gowned in exquisite white and her golden hair flowed out from beneath a golden crown. Behind her, the woman servitor carried the train of her robe of state, and Bourtai leaned over the railing behind her to whisper, excitedly:

“The flame dies from the moat, master, even as thou has said. Truly, thy magic takes care of all things, though it be a strange magic.”

Wan Tengri smiled thinly. One thing his magic could not contrive, to keep the princess’ pure white robe clean while she crossed the width of the Court of the Fountain. Hiding his grin in his beard, Wan Tengri swept a stiff-backed bow and backed to swing wide the main doors of the tower, to release the mechanism of the drawbridge and let it clatter down. The princess lifted her chin in arrogance as she paced leisurely toward the drawbridge. The last flames were flickering out of the moat and, yonder, three hundred cubits away, a warehouse began to burn, rolling black, stinking smoke across the white buildings of the city. The princess marched out and Wan Tengri walked on her left and two paces to the rear. He pulled his eyes away from her and sent them probing over the shadows among the buildings. The curs that had escaped his magic must still be lurking there, and he had a pitifully small band with which to sack a city. His hand closed tautly about his sword hilt—and he saw the princess had stopped.

The nauseous odor of burned human flesh made Wan Tengri’s stomach jerk, but his face was impassive. He stepped to the princess’ side as she faltered at the end of the drawbridge. Here, in her immediate path, was nothing that could be called human, but farther on, the silken tunics still smoldered on a few bodies and beyond that, the men slain by the flame wind were tossed in the careless undignity of death.

“It is a proud day for you, princess.” Wan Tengri’s voice was deep with irony. “Few rulers are given to walk across the bodies of their enemies to the throne!”

The girl’s white face turned up to his and she smiled, but there was coldness in her eyes. “It is good to see them dead, but their stench offends me. Thou shall carry me, my lord.”

Behind the tower, the red fragment of the Mating Moon was rising, and its glow was ghostly across the dead, across the white buildings of Turgohl. Another building was burning, the high tower of Bourtai, where Wan Tengri had briefly stolen his soul.

“It may not be, princess,” Wan Tengri said shortly. “My sword arm must be free, for others of thy enemies surely lurk among those buildings, hiding from my magic. Walk proudly, princess—and hold your train high.”

He dropped back and his sardonic eyes combed the ranks of dead. Who could say whether among these were the wizards of Kasimer, or whether they still marshaled the remnants of their cohorts in the shadow of the Temple of Ahriman? His gaze reached to the shadows ahead.