Thorolf squatted, as living with trolls had accustomed him to do. "Where is Yvette now?"
The Consul shrugged. "As far as I know, your lady love is mewed up in the castle. None hath seen her since your departure. Now tell me the tale of your involvement with that lady. I have never had it straight— merely a hundred rumors, each contradicting the last."
"Very well, Father. See you this place? 'Tis where she and I first met ..."
Thorolf went through the story of his encounter with the unclad Countess, Bardi's magical blunder, and her subsequent capture by Psychomagus Orlandus.
"He has cast upon many followers," said Thorolf, "a spell that causes them to be possessed by a spirit, which enables him to command their implicit obedience. If he bade them jump off a cliff, they would do it."
"Terrible!" muttered Zigram. "I wish someone would magic this accursed cult out of existence! As things now stand, I can do nought, for reasons ye know."
"If I rooted out this nest of vipers, wouldst give me all the protection your position commands?"
"Assuredly so! But ye must needs do a thorough job. If ye let Orlandus and a few of's creatures escape, they'd be back to plague us more. How would ye gain access to his lair, defended by stout fortifications, fanatical followers, and magical spells?"
"Methinks I have a way." said Thorolf.
"How? Through those mythical trollish tunnels?"
Thorolf winced, feeling the testicular cringe that the thought of entering a tunnel gave him. "I'll tell you nought that they could twist out of you. Speaking of my friends the trolls, knowst Orlandus' plans for them?"
"Aye. And I am he who tried to raise them to human rank! But the cultists have me in a cleft stick——"
A loud sneeze made both speakers start. Each looked at the other, saying, "Health!" before they realized that neither had in fact sneezed.
Thorolf sprang up and raked the landscape with a glance. Then he started away from the stream, saying: "Father, come see!"
Thorolf was watching, at his own eye-level, a pair of detached eyeballs hanging in midair. He could see the little red blood vessels forming a network around the interior of the eyeballs. As he watched, the eyeballs swiveled away and began to move off.
"Ho! Come back!" shouted Thorolf, reaching for his sword.
When the eyeballs continued to retreat, Thorolf bounded after them and swung his blade in a whistling arc. The sword met meat, and its unseen target pulled it down to the ground. Blood sprayed from an invisible source.
As Thorolf wrenched his blade loose, a faint, transparent human form, like a man-shaped fog, came slowly into sight. As it solidified, it became a man of medium stature and build, nude and clean-shaven, with a deadly wound where Thorolf's sword had cloven it between neck and shoulder, shearing down into lungs. The wound still bled, but the body showed no signs of life.
"Good gods!" Zigram exclaimed. "What's this, son? Hath some wizard made himself invisible to spy upon us?"
"I have a suspicion, Father. Bide you here whilst I seek evidence."
Thorolf soon returned bearing a pair of boots, breeches, and a yellow robe. He said: "Methought the knave would have hidden his garments nearby. Had he been invisible but his raiment not, we were as startled by an empty suit of clothes walking about as by the whole man. He was one of Orlandus' diaphanes, as the villain calls his pixilated victims."
The Consul said: "Doubtless he sent the fellow to follow me from the city. But why did the Psychomage not make the rascal's eyeballs invisible along with the rest of him? They enabled you to perceive and slay the fellow."
"My professor at Genuvia explained it. Sight comes from the mutual action of light rays and the eye. Were the eyeballs as transparent as the rest of him, the light would pass through unhindered, and the rogue were blind until the spell wore off." Thorolf held up the garments he had found. "Here's your evidence for legal action against the Sophonomists."
Zigram frowned. "I know not, son. If I bring action, Orlandus will claim this fellow acted on his own; and since the rascal's dead, that were hard to disprove. Besides, Orlandus hath the shrewdest attorney in Zurshnitt, Doctor Adolfo, in his pay. Moreover, ye know what they'd do to my repute—"
"Oh, you mean that damned election!" snorted Thorolf. "Where's your courage, man? Which—"
"Stand!" came a new command. From downstream a group of men marched forward, swords in hand. They wore merchants' dress of plain browns and blacks, but bits of mail gleamed dully underneath.
"Who are ye?" barked the Consul, drawing his own blade. Beside him, Thorolf whispered:
"Try not to provoke a battle, Father. You're too old for swordplay."
"And who impugned my courage just now?" rumbled Zigram. "I shall do what I must." Raising his voice, he called: "Wilchar! Odo! To me!"
The Consul's bodyguards came crashing through the bushes, armed, armored, and nocking arrows to bows. Zigram turned back to the newcomers. "Know that I am the Consul General of the Commonwealth of Rhaetia. Who are ye and what do ye here?"
"Let your Excellency not trouble himself," said the leader in the vernacular of Carinthia. "We seek two persons, to wit: Countess Yvette of Grintz and a knave who slew three of our comrades. That hulking man beside you fits the description. Who are ye, sirrah?"
"Concern yourselves not with that," said Thorolf. "You are Duke Gondomar's men. using our sovereign Commonwealth as your private hunting preserve."
"None of your affair—" began the leader, but Thorolf interrupted:
"As for the Countess, she's where neither you nor I have access to her."
"Meaning she's dead?" cried the Carinthian.
"She might as well be, being in thrall to a magician. Now get back to your Duke and cease to pester us." Thorolf turned to the bodyguards. "If it come to blows, how many can you kill ere they close with us?"
"At this range," said Odo, "two surely and four probably. They are seven, and methinks we four could account for the rest."
"So find your horses and gallop for the border," said Thorolf, "counting yourselves lucky to get out unscathed—"
"Hold!" said a new and toneless voice. A group of yellow-robed men approached from upstream with bared swords. The leader, who had spoken, continued in his flat, unmodulated tone: "We see ye have slain one of our number." He indicated the dead man. "Ye are all our prisoners. Resist not, or it will be the worse for you. Yield, and ye shall not be hurt."
Over a dozen yellow robes advanced, spreading out as if to surround both the Consul's men and the Carinthians.
Thorolf said to the Carinthian leader: "These are creatures of the sorcerer Orlandus. If they take us, he'll possess us, like them, with spirits that force us to obey his whims. We must join to fight them!"
"Shoot the yellows!" the Consul roared to his bodyguards.
Instantly two bows twanged. At that range, the arrows struck the chests of two Sophonomists with such force as to sink up to the feathering and protrude from their backs.
Although staggered, the two struck recovered and came on as if nothing had happened. Zigram's bodyguards got off two more arrows, with the same result. The Carinthian leader shouted to his men:
"They're walking corpses! Kill them!"
He sprang forward and struck a terrific backhand at the leading Sophonomist. The man's head flew off, struck the ground, and rolled. Spouting blood, the headless body continued forward, blindly slashing empty air.
"They cannot be slain!" wailed a Carinthian. "All's lost! Flee! Flee!"
As one, the party from Landai turned and ran, as fast as the weight of their mail allowed. They hastened downstream with a jingle and clatter of accouterments.
"Keep shooting!" shouted the Consul. The headless body finally sank to the sward.
Bows twanged, then swords were out and clanging. Thorolf's party formed a back-to-back group as the Sophonomists silently closed with them. Thorolf found them slow, clumsy fighters. He thrust one through and then, finding the fellow still in action, hewed his arm from his shoulder.