Herewiss swung up into the saddle, intrigued to feel Sunspark's heat seeping up through it. (I hope the leather doesn't crack,) he said. (We're heading south. The place where Freelorn is stuck is about a five days' ride from here—)
(For a horse,) Sunspark said with an inward smile. (We'll go faster; I'm curious to see this 'loved' of yours. You'd better hold on tight.)
Several times that night and the next day, the country people of southern Darthen and northern Steldin pointed and wondered at the sudden meteor that blazed across their skies and did not strike the ground anywhere.
4
'Are you a sorcerer?' said Ferrigan curiously.
'Dear me, no!' the Pooka said, shocked. 'Who wants to be a sorcerer? You spend five days of a week recovering from one day's spelling; and if you die in the middle of a spell, it takes three months before the headache goes away.'
The place was old enough to have been built in the first wave of Darthen's colonization. It was hardly more than a crude castle keep built of fieldstone. For outworks it had nothing more than an earthern dike, surrounded by a ditch that had once been full of sharpened stakes. They had long since rotted away, the place having been abandoned for some newer, more defensible castle of hewn stone.
But the keep was still quite solid, thick-walled enough so that an earthquake could hardly have brought it down. There were no windows but arrowslits, the tower top was deeply crenellated, and the door was of iron a foot thick, judging by the fact that it had not rusted away in all the intervening years. Time had been kind to the place. Its mortar had grown stronger with age, and only here or there was any stone shattered by frost. It was a redoubt worthy of the name, and it stood there at the center of the cuplike vale with stolid rocky patience, frowning at the surrounding hills, antique and indomitable.
Herewiss leaned wearily on Sunspark's crupper and frowned back at the keep from where they stood, about two miles away, atop one of the long bare surrounding ridges. The keep was surrounded by a fairly large force, disposed around it for the siege in the usual Steldene fashion. The troops were about half a mile or so from the walls, separated into four large camps, each oriented to one of the compass points. Herewiss agreed with Freelorn's estimate; there were about a thousand of them, and maybe more.
'For five people!' he said aloud, putting his head down on his folded arms. 'Steldin must be awfully nervous.'
Sunspark stood beside him in the red roan form, idly switching flies with its long glittering tail. It looked at the besieging army with supreme disdain, and snorted softly. (It hardly matters. Give me half an hour and I will bring the fire down on them and leave not a one alive.)
'Sunspark, I don't want to kill, there's no need. Restraint is considered a virtue in these parts.'
The elemental snorted again, flicking its tail at a nonexistent fly and fetching Herewiss a stinging blow across the back.
'Behave yourself or I'll make it rain on you again.'
(That's no mastery, there are rainclouds coming in anyway; it'll be pouring after nightfall. You keep me dry, now!)
'I keep my promises. You'll be fine. Look, it's getting on towards sundown — I want you to take a message to Freelorn for me.'
(What am I — a pigeon?)
'Spark—'
(All right, all right.)
'Get in there any way you like, so long as it's unobtrusive. Say to Freelorn that I'm waiting for nightfall to make my move. Tell him that he should try not to be too bothered by what he sees — I'm going to try to go past the bounds of battle-sorcery he's seen in the past. Tell him how to find this spot — or better still, after I'm finished, go and meet them and bring them here. There are times when Lorn needs a map to find his own head.'
(Shall I tell him that too?)
'No, I've told him enough times myself. When you finish with that, get back here. This place is wild enough so that there might be a few Fyrd wandering around. I don't want to get eaten while I'm trying to concentrate on my spelling.'
(Tell Freelorn this. And tell Freelorn that. There are five people in there, oh Master mine. What does he look like?)
Herewiss sighed. 'Look for a small man, about a span short of my height, with longish dark hair and a long mustache, and a sense of humor like yours. Chances are that he'll have on a surcoat with the White Lion on it. Is that enough for you?'
(If there are only five people in there, then I think I can manage.)
'Then get going.'
Sunspark's horse-shape wavered and turned molten, gathered itself together and swirled about with a blast of oven-heat, became a bright amorphous form that put out wings and rose against the sky, cooling and darkening. A moment later a red desert hawk spiraled up a thermal partly of its own making.
Herewiss sat down, making a face at the smell of scorched grass, and considered what he was going to do. It wasn't going to be easy to dispose of an army this large. There weren't too many of the Steldene regulars among the forces; most of them were conscript peasantry, ununiformed and hurriedly armed. That would be a help. But the regulars and their commanders would have seen real battle- sorcery before. They would be familiar with the tricks of the trade, and unafraid of illusion. Herewiss did have some advantages; he had a great deal of native power, and access to references and methods about which most sorcerers knew nothing. Also, the fact that there was no other army attacking them in concert with the illusions would confuse the Steldenes somewhat. By the time any of them realized what was happening and tried to mobilize a force to stop him, it would be too late. He hoped.
A thousand men. Herewiss shook his head. The King of Steldin must have been worried about the possibility of the Arlene countryside rising against his people when they brought Freelorn home — or the possibility of Freelorn getting away, and the Arlene army moving into Steldene lands in retaliation. If the Oath of Lion and Eagle wasn't protecting Darthen from Cillmod's incursions, the King of Steldin had good reason to worry.
Sighing, Herewiss looked at the thunderheads massing on the northern horizon. The storm would make a fine cover for their escape. He disliked the prospect of leaving over wet ground that would take their trail. But speed, and fear, and the direction in which he would lead his friends, would confound the pursuit. Now he had to concern himself with the sorceries he would need.
Herewiss spent at least half an hour leafing through the grimoires, memorizing pertinent passages and wishing he weren't so ethical. To frighten a thousand men into flight was more difficult than killing them. It would have been simplicity itself to turn Sunspark loose. The elemental's methods were swift and brutally efficient, and its conscience would be clean afterwards. To Sunspark death was nothing more than a change from one form to another. Or Herewiss himself could have laid warfetter on the lot of them, leaving the whole army deaf and blind and stripped of their other senses, fighting nothing but their own terror, and probably dying of it. But his conscience was not as accommodating as Sunspark's. The last time he had slain was one time too many, and even if that had not been the case, there was still sorcerer's backlash to consider. To lay warfetter on so many people was to open the way for a huge cumulative backlash to strike him, one which would certainly leave him either dead or insane.
So Herewiss chose illusions as his weaponry. He would have to alter the formulae to accommodate so many people, and the backlash would hit him proportionately -he would be unconscious for a couple of days. As he went through the book, making his final choices in the fading light, Sunspark dropped out of the sky on to his shoulder.