Hearst watched. Waited. Listened. Nothing moved. No challenge came. He went up the next set of stairs -then the next.
By the time Hearst reached the uppermost storey of the tower of the order of Ebber, he had only scorn for those who were afraid of it. It contained a great many strange things, to be sure – but there was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing that was malignant: nothing that was even alive. He was glad of that.
He had sobered up enough by now to see what a terrible risk he had taken. It was one thing to risk his own life: any man was free to do that. It was quite another thing to risk the entire city of Selzirk by daring to stir up whatever evil might have been lurking in the tower. As the effects of the wine wore off, Hearst saw, too, that no feat of heroism, however bold and outrageous, was going to resolve his problems, his questions. Still, in a way, he was disappointed that he had found no challenge worthy of his courage.
The uppermost storey of the tower of Ebber was almost empty. The only thing in it was a wooden staff, which looked much like the staff of power that the wizard Phyphor used to carry. Hearst sheathed his sword, deciding to take the staff as a souvenir. Blackwood, with all the reading he had done since they arrived in Selzirk, might even know how to get some use out of the staff.
Hearst took hold of the staff: and was overcome. He had no defences whatsoever against what he had encountered. He lacked even the time in which to register his protest, it was done so quickly.
And afterwards, once it was done, Hearst found that he could observe everything: but could alter nothing.
The wizard Ebonair – he called himself by the name of the island on which he had been born, many thousands of years before – held his staff in the only hand available to him. He looked down at the hook which had been substituted for the right hand. Clumsy. How did that happen? He scanned the available memories, saw how the copper-strike snake injected its venom into the hand, how the sword rose and fell, sweeping the hand away. Truly the action of a ruthless man!
Then, scanning other memories, Ebonair changed his mind. Not ruthless at all. Weak. Confused. Sentimental. Ebonair had not tasted such agonising since the time he invaded the mind of an adolescent student priest of the Temple of the Ultimate Ethic. Weak, yes: yet successful. Such opportunities! Reclaiming the Harvest Plains would take only a word.
The wizard Ebonair had known it would take a hero to seize the key to the tower of Ebber from the pyramid tomb, and then to invade the tower itself, but he had been successful beyond his wildest dreams. Instead of using the hero's body and reputation to fight to reclaim his kingdom, he had only to step outside the tower and all would be on their knees before him.
Another memory.
Interesting.
Underground darkness. The noise of the river, rushing, rushing. A voice. Pain in the voice: weakness. Fear. 'You will have the power to enter the tower of Arl. And you will understand the High Speech, the reading of it, the writing of it, the speaking of it.' Darkness and the beat of a heart. Darkness, and then – Interesting indeed. Ebonair had never known that a wizard of Arl could, as he died, transfer his memories to the living. A pretty trick. A pretty trick indeed. But it is one thing to pass on a few disorganised memories: quite another to preserve one's identity within an artefact while spending centuries engaged in the Meditations, building the power needed to take possession of another body.
Such long centuries! Dust. Madness. The taste of ambition sustaining the will when eroding silence seems beyond endurance. And now the time has come.
He yawned.
Grinned like a skull.
Then laughed.
He was young, free, alive, with all the world supine beneath his trampling feet! Time to go…
The wizard Ebonair descended to the lowest level of the tower of Ebber, in which were gathered many metal devices from the Days of Wrath. In his last incarnation, the secrets of those devices had escaped him. In this incarnation, he hoped to do better. Ebonair commanded the tower: 'Open!'
A doorway opened to a flood of afternoon sunlight, revealing the two who stood on the battlements.
'Hearst,' said Blackwood. 'Are you all right?'
'What happened?' said Miphon. 'Morgan, you look strange. Are you hurt?'
As Blackwood and Miphon stepped forward, the wizard Ebonair let the Hearst-body sag toward the floor. Miphon ran forward and caught it, brushing against the staff of power; the wizard Ebonair took him with… a little difficulty. That was not as easy as he had expected! 'Miphon,' said Blackwood. 'Help me. Hearst's unconscious. Why are you standing there like that?'
Ebonair scanned Miphon's memories. Pox. Pox doctor. Scabs. Boils. Poultices. Leaking wombs. Bad backs. Leeches, application of. Bruises. Solicitous words to a man… what? Dying? If dying, why bother with him? Hands greasy, slimy, blood, blood, tender hands easing a cord free from the neck, taking the weight, eliciting the first birthcry – and smiling! Spare us from biology.
'Miphon,' said Blackwood, shaking him.
'Take this,' said Ebonair, getting the Miphon-voice all wrong, but the note of command was right, the peasant took the staff of power even as the wizard let the Miphon-body sag toward the floor.
'No!' screamed Blackwood, as it happened.
But for Ebonair, it was easy. Easier than taking over the Miphon-body. Almost as easy as seizing the Hearst-body. Memories now. A quick scan – nothing, after all, to be gained from the mind of a peasant. Sky. Blue sky. Sky? Is that all?
Sky, blue sky, the colour of my lover's eyes; Leaf, young leaf, her hands no softer.
The transfiguring vision. A trick, surely. A trick of perception. An illusion. Like a drug-trance. Like a mystic's starvation delusion. Not true. Not real. No!
And Ebonair screamed: 'No!'
Locked in the Blackwood-body, Ebonair collapsed.
A poet may, on occasion, see the world transfigured by visionary perception yet still come to terms with the world. A man such as Blackwood may see the world that way constantly, day by day, and survive by isolating himself as much as possible from human society, evading the pains of the world by immersing himself in scholarship and study.
But Ebonair, viewing himself through the lens of visionary revelation, saw how his entire life had been devoted to killing, distorting, maiming or repressing the flame of life which persists in every entity; worse still he saw the damage he had done to himself.
A saint may live with such visions; an ordinary man, with some effort, may survive them. For Ebonair, they threatened madness. He had to escape. He thrust the staff of power out to touch the supine Hearst-body. The next moment, Ebonair occupied that body: but in such a panic that the body was thrown into spasm.
The head of the Hearst-body slammed against one of the inert metal machines from the Days of Wrath, and was knocked unconscious.
Miphon came to slowly. He was groggy, dizzy. His head hurt. He blinked at the sunlight streaming into the tower of Ebber. He half-expected to see spectators crowding the entrance: surely many people in Selzirk must be able to see the doorway to the tower of Ebber was open. But there was nobody. Of course. They were afraid of it. And clearly there were good reasons to support their superstitious dread of the place.
Quickly Miphon checked both Blackwood and Hearst. Both were unconscious. So where was the wizard? Ebonair: yes, that was his name. Miphon had learnt a little from his enemy even as his enemy was learning from him: he knew to look for the staff of power. Which was on the floor of the tower. By Hearst. Which implied that Ebonair was trapped for the time being in the unconscious Hearst-body. Which meant there was a simple way of getting rid of Ebonair: kill Hearst, then burn the staff of power for good measure. But no, he could not do that! Or could he? Hearst would not have hesitated, in his place. It was the only way.
To delay the decision, Miphon sat back and tried to remember what Ebonair had discovered when rummaging through Miphon's memory. Mostly images of sickness and healing. Discovering Miphon to be a member of the order of Nin, an animal-caller and a pox-doctor, Ebonair had not looked very deeply.