The Book Of The Magnakai

The Book of the Magnakai // 1

THE BOOK OF THE MAGNAKAI

Joe Dever and John Grant

The Book of the Magnakai // 2 DEDICATION

For Jeff and Ruth Green

– JD

For Chris, Rowie and Oliver – The Frighteners – with love and thanks for 17th May, 1991

– JG

The Book of the Magnakai // 3

Heard of the death of Mr Gibbon, the calumniator of the despised Nazarene, the derider of Christianity. Awful dispensation! He too was my acquaintance. Lord, I bless Thee, considering how much infidel acquaintance I have had, that my soul never came into their secret! How many souls have his writings polluted! Lord preserve others from their contagion. – Hannah More, Diary, 1774 Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr Gibbon? – William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (attrib. in Boswell's Life of Johnson)

The Book of the Magnakai // 4 CONTENTS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

In Earlier Days . . . The Shockwave Rider The War in the Air The Clipper of the Clouds Vermilion Sands The Dispossessed The Iron Heel Dying of the Light Take Back Plenty

The Book of the Magnakai // 5 In Earlier Days . . . Long, long before time itself began there were only the Gods and the void. Throughout a timeless eternity there was war among the Gods, as Good and Evil sought to destroy each other. Neither could ever hope to succeed, and yet the struggle raged on . . . The Goddess Ishir, High Priestess of the Moon, saw the futility of the conflict, and she made a truce with Naar, the King of the Darkness. To symbolize it she shaped from the truth of her pledge a great vessel, into which Naar infused the essence of his terrible power. This creation became Aon, the "Great Balance", a universe in which Good and Evil compensated for each other. The Gods were jealous of the worlds of Aon, and the Peace of Ishir, as the truce was called, was soon sundered. Here a world would be conquered by Evil, there another captured by Good. At last only one, Magnamund, remained unclaimed, and here Good and Evil met for a final confrontation. First to enter Magnamund were the forces of Ishir's ally, Kai, Lord of the Sun. He sent beings that took the form of giant sea dragons. Naar, too, sent dragon-shaped creatures to the world, and for centuries there was war – a war won by the forces of Evil. All seemed to be lost when Naar's minion Agarash the Damned pursued a wise old creature called Nyxator to his hiding-place at Magnamund's core and slew him there, Naar would have been triumphant had not Ishir and Kai introduced magic to the world in the form of a race called the Elder Magi. They recaptured the sacred Lorestones that Nyxator had created many years ago, crushed Agarash and his empire, and saw the dawning of a millennia-long era of peace. Many civilizations rose and fell. Among the races that came into being were the Drakkarim, who took humanoid form yet were not of human stock. They terrorized the land, slaughtering all who would stand in their way. Yet they were not sufficiently powerful to conquer the world in the name of Evil, and so Naar created twenty new champions, the Darklords, and sent them into Magnamund. Assisted by the Drakkarim, the Darklords swiftly subjugated vast tracts of Northern Magnamund. In desperation Ishir and Kai sent forth a race of humans called the Sommlending, who had had their origins in uncharted islands far to the north of mainland Magnamund. The Sommlending drove back the mightiest of the Darklords, Vashna, and colonized a small country which they called Sommerlund. Their sole weapons were their wisdom and their courage, as well as one given to them by the Gods of Good: the Sommerswerd, or "Sword of the Sun". Only a range of mountains, the Durncrags, separated Sommerlund from the great waste of the Darklands, where the Darklords bided their time, plotting to overthrow the Sommlending and claim all of Magnamund for their master. The

The Book of the Magnakai // 6 greatest of them, Vashna, aided by the Drakkarim, by lesser Darklords called Xaghash, and by evil wizards known as the Nadziranim, constructed in the Darklands eight vast fortress-cities, the greatest of which was Helgedad. In Helgedad's dungeons he spawned vile creatures – Vordaks, Doomwolves, Kraan, Zlanbeast and Giaks. Most loathsome of all were the Helghast, who could adopt human guise and mix among the Sommlending. The forces of Darkness, with the Helghast in the van, assailed Sommerlund in a terrible war, but were driven back by King Ulnar I, who slew Vashna with the Sommerswerd at the Battle of Maakengorge. The Baron of Toran distinguished himself in this battle, and was the last to see Ulnar I alive. Later he successfully sought the long-lost Lorestones and thereby found how to unlock the wisdom and strength that had been lying dormant within him. He became the first Kai Lord, taking the name of Sun Eagle, and founded a monastery where promising children could be reared so that their latent Kai powers could be developed fully. He recorded his experiences and the wisdom he discovered in a work called The Book of the Magnakai. The Darklords struggled among themselves until one of them, Zagarna, attained supremacy. Several times he launched onslaughts against Sommerlund; each time he was repulsed through the courage and fortitude of the Kai and the other Sommlending. But in the year 5050 an ambitious magician called Vonotar defected from Sommerlund's Brotherhood of the Crystal Star and allied himself with Zagarna. On the Feast of Fehmarn, when the Kai had congregated at their monastery to welcome the first day of Spring, a vast Darklands army attacked, completely exterminating the Order. Not quite completely. A young initiate called Silent Wolf was inadvertently absent from the celebrations, returning only after the massacre was done. His life, too, would have been forfeit had not an enigmatic elemental called Alyss engaged Vonotar in a spiritual battle for long enough that Silent Wolf was able to escape the vicinity of the carnage. During his flight he encountered a young magician, Banedon; as they exchanged names Silent Wolf realized that he was truly alone in the world, and so took to himself a new name: Lone Wolf. Zagarna's war of conquest continued, and the reigning Sommlending king, Ulnar IV, determined to send for the Sommerswerd, which was held in trust by neighbouring Durenor. A young woman called Qinefer had already distinguished herself in the struggle against the aggressor and seemed to Ulnar's eye to possess many of the attributes of a Kai warrior. He was on the brink of sending her to Durenor – for only a Kai may successfully wield the Sommerswerd – when Lone Wolf arrived in the capital, Holmgard. Ulnar commanded him to go in Qinefer's stead. Lone Wolf reached Hammerdal, the capital of Durenor, after many attempts on his life – all of which, he later discovered,

The Book of the Magnakai // 7 had been orchestrated by Vonotar. Among the many friends who assisted the young Kai was Viveka, a roaming assassin. Lone Wolf was able to retrieve the Sommerswerd, and with it he destroyed Zagarna. Qinefer led the Sommlending forces that routed the remains of the Darklands army. Vonotar fled to the rigid polar realms of Kalte, where he usurped the throne and worked to create a race of master-warriors who would enslave Sommerlund. Lone Wolf pursued him there and, with the aid of an elderly magician called Loi-Kymar and a renegade Giak called Carag, brought the wizard to justice. Vonotar was thrust into the Dazhiarn, a plane of existence from which, it was believed, there could be no return. Lone Wolf and Qinefer determined to continue the task of rebuilding the Kai Monastery so that the Order of the Kai might be reborn. Alyss decided that it was safe for her to leave Magnamund for a while in order to discover the truth of her own origin at the dawn of time. Banedon returned to the home of his Brotherhood in Toran, intending thereafter to lead the life of a recluse. Of course, it didn't quite work out like that. It became evident that the Darklords had created a portal in the kingdom of Vassagonia through which they were infiltrating large numbers of their Drakkarim and Helghast with the aim of conquering the Lastlands from within. Banedon was sent to Vassagonia's capital, Barrakeesh, to help another magician, Jenara, take charge of the situation. Unknown to them, Lone Wolf was captured and taken to Helgedad as a pawn in the struggle among the Darklords to determine who should be their Archlord in place of Zagarna. Qinefer, assuming Lone Wolf dead, shouldered the burden of carrying on his work; she was assisted by Cloud Maker, a reprobate who had once studied at the Monastery but who had deserted in order to pursue a lustier existence elsewhere. Sadly, he did not live long after his return, being slain by a flock of marauding Kraan. Qinefer went to Barrakeesh, where she was welcomed by Banedon and Jenara. She discovered the source of the spawn, the Birthplace, deep in the heart of the palace of Vassagonia's ruler, the Zakhan Moudalla. She entered the Birthplace, an area of space constructed by the Nadziranim to be only partly within this universe; the experience was so abasing that she left Barrakeesh, refusing to explain herself to Banedon or Jenara, and returned to the Monastery. Some while later, to her astonishment, Lone Wolf – robbed of the memory of where he had been – was returned to Sommerlund thanks to the machinations of Slûtar, a main contender for the Archlordship of the Darklands. However, Slûtar was soon thereafter defeated by the Darklord Haakon, Lord of Aarnak, who took the throne.

The Book of the Magnakai // 8 A Vassagonian noble, Barraka, was enslaved by the spirit of the Darklord Vashna, and was drawn to the place of Vashna's death, the Maakengorge, which lay in a southern province of Sommerlund called Ruanon. His army of bandits laid waste the province. Lone Wolf, alongside a company of King's Guards led by Captain Remir D'Val and Lieutenant Petra of the King's Guards, strove to oust Barraka, but with little success; worse, the Vassagonian was planning to use a ritual, involving human sacrifice, to raise Vashna and his hosts from the dead. This plan Lone Wolf finally succeeded in thwarting, thanks in part to the intervention of Qinefer and Viveka, who had been brought to the Maakengorge through the influence of the Guildmaster of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. At last Ulnar himself led a sizeable army into Ruanon, and he and D'Val drove the intruders from Sommerlund's borders. The immediate problem was solved. Qinefer's reticence on the subject of the Birthplace lulled Lone Wolf and Ulnar into thinking that the matter was of little importance. The Guildmaster knew otherwise, of course – and Banedon and Jenara, still isolated in Barrakeesh, most certainly did – but no action was taken for almost a year, by which time it might have been too late. Then, at the behest of the Zakhan Moudalla, Lone Wolf was called to Barrakeesh to sign a peace treaty between Sommerlund and Vassagonia. By the time he arrived there, however, Moudalla had died and been replaced by a vicious new Zakhan, Kimah, whose equally vicious secret police, the Sharnazim, tried to murder Lone Wolf's escort, Allani, and to arrest Lone Wolf himself. Banedon and a barbarian called Thog the Mighty assisted Lone Wolf in his flight. They also saved Allani's life, but he was soon captured by the Sharnazim. Thog, who proved to be more than he seemed in that he shared his body with Jenara's mind, decided to stay in Barrakeesh and attempt to free Allani. Banedon, however, set off for home – a villa in the Vassagonian desert – accompanied by Qinefer, who had passed through the Birthplace and, in so doing, both destroyed it and recreated her own soul. She was now capable of seeing both her life and those of others in terms of intricate and occasionally overlapping patterns of events and/or decisions; part of this recognition involved the painful discovery that her own future pattern did not mesh with that of Lone Wolf unless he was prepared to alter his own. He, not understanding her new knowledge, failed to do this. Lone Wolf overheard a discussion between Kimah and the Archlord of Darkness, Haakon, during which he discovered that the Book of the Magnakai, the repository of the Kai knowledge of the first of all the Kai Lords, Sun Eagle, was concealed within the holiest of Vassagonian shrines, the Tomb of the Majhan. Haakon was seeking the book to destroy it; if Lone Wolf could discover it first, he could use it to advance his own knowledge towards Kai

The Book of the Magnakai // 9 Grand Mastership and also to transmit the Kai lore to the acolytes he had gathered at the Monastery in Sommerlund. First, though, he had to escape from the Zakhan's palace, and that was proving no easy matter . . .

The Book of the Magnakai // 10 CHAPTER ONE The Shockwave Rider The war hound leapt directly towards his throat. Beyond it the death-masks of the two Drakkar guards split into vile anticipatory grins. Lone Wolf was going to be easy prey. The beast's teeth were a needle-sharp array of dripping yellow death. Lone Wolf twisted his head away to one side and spun on his heels to turn and run. He smelt the foul breath of the war hound as it hurtled past his shoulder, desperately trying to seize at him with its jaws. It crashed down onto the polished marble floor in front of him, its claws clattering and scraping as it skittered on the smooth stone, skidding as it forced itself to coil around to confront him, the muscles of its sides and neck straining with the effort. It immediately moved into a crouch again, looking up at him voraciously through the virulent yellow slashes of its eyes. Behind him he could hear the breathing of the Drakkarim. He chanced a glance and saw the two guards in their jet-black armour, their red cloaks flapping, their dark swords unsheathed. The war hound sprang once more, and once more Lone Wolf was able to dodge it at the last moment. It skidded on the marble again, but this time it was unable to control its impetus. It crashed with full force into a stone pillar. He heard the crack of its broken muzzle in the instant before it let out a great howl of fury and pain. Quick as thought, Lone Wolf slashed down on it with the Sommerswerd, nearly cutting it in half. Red blood sprayed his legs. The carcase spun across the floor, impeding the Drakkarim in their rush towards him. One tripped and went sprawling; the other leapt the whirling cadaver but landed awkwardly, momentarily losing his balance. Again Lone Wolf turned and fled. There was sweat running down his forehead to sting his eyes, and his breath was already beginning to come heavily. His hair whipped and slapped at the sides of his face. He couldn't see any immediate means of escape. There were no doorways in sight. He found some stairs and clattered down them, leaning heavily on the banister with his right hand. At the bottom he found an ornate silver archway, through which he could see a shadowy yellow light. Behind him he could hear the Drakkarim's thundering progress and their grunts of effort – their armour must be heavy. He ran through the archway and once more discovered himself on the balcony above the throne-room where he had first seen the Darklord Haakon and the new Zakhan of Vassagonia, Kimah, conducting their sinister conversation about the Orb of

The Book of the Magnakai // 11 Death and the Book of the Magnakai. This time there wasn't any opportunity for stealth, and the two of them looked up immediately, their faces twisting first with astonishment and then with wrath. "Kill him!" boomed Haakon's terrible roar of hatred. Lone Wolf could see ahead of him, at the other end of the balcony, a further archway and, beside it, more stairs. If he could reach either of them before the pursuing Drakkarim there might just be a chance of . . . "Kai swine!" yelled Haakon, and instinctively Lone Wolf looked towards the grim, imposing silhouette of the huge Darklord. One of Haakon's great spiked fists was raised towards him. Suddenly a Drakkar was in the archway ahead of Lone Wolf, appearing so abruptly that it was as if he had sprung into existence out of nowhere. He swayed arrogantly towards him, his darkly gleaming sword held high above the contorted features etched grotesquely across the front of his black, domed helmet. Moving with surprising speed, the Drakkar lunged forwards with his evilly curved sword, cutting across the muscle near the top of Lone Wolf's left arm. Lone Wolf was able to use his Kai abilities to deaden the pain of the stabbing gash almost immediately, but nevertheless he was fleetingly exposed. The Drakkar made a low, husking noise, a hideous parody of a giggle, and, sword once more upraised, moved in for the kill at flickering speed. Lone Wolf twisted at the waist, holding up the Sommerswerd defensively, terrifiedly conscious, in the midst of the maelstrom of his thoughts, of his own vulnerability. There was a deafening crash that seemed to fill the entire throne-room, and Lone Wolf was blinded by a sheet of incandescent blue light. Is this what death is like? he thought in an instant of all-consuming terror. # For the first few hours Banedon and Qinefer spent their time quietly in the villa. There were few visitors to the little oasis around which the airy building and three others like it clustered. The villa belonged to some well-to-do Vassagonian friends of Jenara, who had lent it to the two magicians assuming, Banedon had no doubt, that they wanted it for romantic purposes. Now that Jenara was back in Barrakeesh, searching the whereabouts of her lover, Allani, the Zakhan's arch-enemy, Banedon and Qinefer would have the place to themselves until the arrival of the Skyrider. They passed the time in peaceful activities, rarely speaking to each other. Frequently the young magician would come across her standing outside the ring of palm trees that surrounded the oasis, gazing towards the south, her eyes seeming to see into an

The Book of the Magnakai // 12 infinite distance. On such occasions he would steal quietly away, knowing that she was exploring the new soul she had discovered inside herself during her return to the Birthplace. That encounter had changed her beyond all recognition. He remembered her as the swiftly moving, sometimes even boisterous, woman she had been before: a terrifying foe in battle and yet somehow never an enemy, a person who had experienced unspeakable horrors during her childhood and who, through them, had developed a resilience of mind and a firm optimism that had borne her through all forms of adversity. Then had come her first taste of the Birthplace, and she had changed – not so much that it was obvious to any but those closest to her, but nonetheless significantly. She had become occasionally moody, prone to bouts of a smiling depression, as if there were someone or something else hiding behind the mask that she presented to the world. But now – now, after revisiting the Birthplace, she had become something else entirely, something that at times he fancied was no longer truly human. Her movements were slower but had a smoothness and fluidity that transcended gracefulness, as if somehow each of them was an expression of tranquillity; yet there was about them also a sense of colossal power that could, if needed, be unleashed. And she acted with an impression of authority, of complete confidence in the course along which her future would take her. In this context she talked – on those rare occasions when she did talk about it – of patterns of events or of paths through mazes, and of the way that understanding the subtleties of those patterns enabled her also to understand the myriad events of the maze around her and of her own course through it. But, Banedon thought, what had changed most of all about her were her eyes. Before, they had had a warmth and a softness and a lustre. It was not that they had become hard, more that there was a sort of timelessness in them, as if the world they were looking out on extended forever into both past and future. Banedon would have found the effect uncanny had it not been that he had such an affection for Qinefer – or, rather, for the two Qinefers, the old and the new. He was content to be in the company of this quietly alien person, and he sensed that she found great comfort in his own presence. That night, after they had finished a silent meal of spiced vegetables and crystallized fruits, and had cleared away their few simple wooden utensils, they sat companionably together on the scrubby grass outside the villa, watching the sky change through countless subtle shifts of colour as the Sun lowered towards the horizon. "Shall I tell you a story?" said Banedon softly. "There's a story I'd like to tell you, and I think that now's the right time." "Tell me your story, Banedon." Her voice was little more than a whisper, sounding like one of the hot breezes that toyed

The Book of the Magnakai // 13 with the dusty surface sands of the desert. He looked sideways and saw the redness of the sky touching the curves of her cheek. So he told her of faraway Dessi, of a game of cards that had taken place on a drunken evening, and of a ship that could sail among the clouds. # The Darklord Haakon, Lord of Aarnak and Archlord of Darkness, watched with coldly furious eyes as the Kai brat reeled from the onslaught of the Drakkar. His minion had succeeded in wounding Lone Wolf, and was now moving with vengeful speed to capitalize upon his advantage. The Darklord envied the grim triumph the half-man would feel as he butchered the notorious slayer of Zagarna. For a moments longer Haakon thought to leave it to the red-robed warrior to make the kill, but then he recalled how many times Lone Wolf had thwarted his servants in the past – even when death had seemed certain. Why, the whelp had even survived Helgedad: perhaps Haakon should have had him killed then, but at the time it had seemed more important to humiliate Slûtar. The killing of Sommerlund's champion was a matter too important to be left to chance. No one possessed more of the raw power of Evil than did Haakon himself, and never again might he have such an opportunity to slay Lone Wolf. It would give him malicious pleasure to be able to report to his master, Naar, that he and he alone had been able to eliminate the last of the Kai – he, Haakon, where Zagarna had so miserably failed. The forces of Evil would be rid of the thorn that had been in their flesh ever since his doltish predecessor on the throne of Darkness had so stupidly allowed the stripling to escape when the hosts from the Darklands had annihilated all the others of the Order of the Kai. Then, once the Book of the Magnakai had likewise been destroyed, so that never again could the wisdom of the Kai resurface among the puny mortals who had dared to resist the darkness of Naar, Evil would triumph and Magnamund would forever be under the subjugation of Naar's will. All of the universe of Aon would, too, become Naar's at that last stroke – Ishir, and that fool of an ally of hers, the Sun God Kai, would be banished into a neverending torture composed of their own loss of power. At last the aeons-old struggle between the Gods would be over. And Haakon would be the Archlord of Darkness for the rest of eternity. No, these things were too important to be left to the slash of a Drakkar's blade! Behind the vast foreboding figure of the Darklord, the Zakhan Kimah cowered on his grandiose throne. He had suddenly realized that the Orb of Death – the prize given to him for permitting Haakon and the denizens of Darkness to enter

The Book of the Magnakai // 14 Vassagonia and hence the lands beyond the Durncrags – although a fearsome weapon in mortal terms, was, in comparison with the terrible powers at the command of the forces of Evil, nothing but a worthless trinket, a bauble, a scrap thrown to a dog. Haakon called mentally upon his embodiments of right-handed magic, the Nadziranim, to focus their loathsome powers into the yellow-grey crystal that he held in his studded fist. He could feel it pulsing in his horny grasp as their energies built up within it – yet the flow was sluggish, as if the Nadziranim's own forces had somehow been sapped. Haakon frowned. A full second passed, time enough for Lone Wolf to parry a thrust from the Drakkar and swing his own golden blade in an arc . . . that cut only through empty air. And then Haakon could sense that the crystal was almost filled with a roiling cloud of right-handed energy, that a single extra scintilla of the Nadziranim's evil magic would be enough to bring the crystal's lattice structure to the threshold of tolerance that would force it to cast off all of its potency in a single titanic eruption of malignant energy. The Drakkar lunged again at the exact moment that an incandescent bolt of blue lightning streaked from Haakon's fist towards the gallery. The air crackled in complaint as it was ripped asunder by the magical stream. The throne-room was lit with a supernatural brilliance of such intensity that it was as if, for an instant, it had become the heart of a star. Even Haakon was momentarily blinded. There was a crash mightier than any thunder. The light died and the air of the throne-room imploded to fill the space created by those of its molecules that had been annihilated by the beam's passage. Kimah, whimpering, clutched his ears, blood beginning to seep through his fingers. And the balcony was empty. # The Magiocracy of Dessi lies to the south of Vassagonia. It is a sparsely populated, inhospitable land. Into its coastline chop the estuaries of gloomy rivers leading to the Gulf of Tentarium, that great expanse of water where the Tentarias – a string of lakes and land-locked seas dividing Northern from Southern Magnamund – join the Great Eastern Ocean. Much of the country is covered by dense and virulent jungle, among whose poisonous trees some ancient race long ago succeeded in carving a simple network of trails. The Chasm of Gorgoron is an obscene slash traversing almost one-third of the nation. Between Vassagonia and Dessi lie ranges of high mountains eroded by the wind and the desert sands from the north into grotesque shapes, so that the traveller's eye sees

The Book of the Magnakai // 15 in them countless bizarre sculptures that seem to move as the Sun crosses the sky and the light changes. Its towns are few and small: even its capital, Elzian, is barely more than a sprawling village. It has scant and underexploited resources of precious metals and gems, and small mercantile vessels ply along the Tentarias – the chain of lakes and small seas that separates the country from the great landmass of Southern Magnamund – trading produce from more fertile lands for these cold but valuable treasures. Most of the people of Dessi live among the mountains. They are the remnants of the Elder Magi, who came to Magnamund almost ten thousand years ago, charged by Ishir and Kai to challenge Agarash the Damned, the servant of Naar who for two thousand years before that had subjected the world to the Age of Eternal Night. Using the magic that the Gods had granted them they entranced Agarash into a dreamless slumber in his fortress at Naaros, where he held the stolen Lorestones of Nyxator. When Agarash at last awoke to find the Lorestones gone, his wrath tore the very sky apart. He unleashed hordes of his Creatures of Darkness upon the world – their single aim, to destroy the Elder Magi. For a thousand years war blighted Magnamund, as the power of Agarash was locked in mortal combat with the subtler, more insidious arts of the Elder Magi. At length the magicians were able to turn the might of Agarash's empire in upon itself, so bringing about his downfall. Thus was welcomed a time of comparative peace. During it, however, there appeared a treacherous race, the Cenerese, who released a plague that laid waste to the Elder Magi. Few of them were left alive. The survivors, having taken refuge in the mountains of Dessi, saw a decline in the powers of their magic as the centuries passed and their numbers dwindled yet further. Yet it was from the magic of the Elder Magi that all of the forms of magic we know in Northern Magnamund descended. Qinefer listened, without interrupting, as Banedon told her all this. # It was the soul-stuff of the Sommerswerd that saved Lone Wolf – otherwise he might have blundered to an inevitable death, sightless in the aftermath of that terrible blast of pure light. As the Kai warrior's mind sailed close to unconsciousness, the warmth of the great weapon flooded into him and eased away his blindness, so that within moments he was able to see again. All around him lay tatters of smouldering clothing, cooling scraps of metal armour, and what looked at first to be strips of cooked meat. Lone Wolf gagged when he realized what they were. The Drakkar must have taken the full force of whatever it was that the Darklord had hurled against them. Lone Wolf himself, falling, had been shielded by the parapet of the balcony.

The Book of the Magnakai // 16 "So die all the hopes of Ishir!" someone was shouting, and Lone Wolf realized that Haakon must believe he had slain both of them. There was still a chance of escape. Shaking his head muzzily, Lone Wolf pulled himself to his hands and knees. Pushing the Sommerswerd like a trembling probe ahead of him, he crawled along the balcony, keeping himself well below the level of the balustrade, until he reached the balcony's end. Even at this distance from the remains of the Drakkar, the stench of scorched flesh was still nauseatingly strong. His mind sucked greedily at the soul-stuff of the Sommerswerd as he made his abject progress, and rationality returned gradually to him. Strength slowly returned to his muscles. By the time he found himself confronted by a curving flight of marble stairs that led upwards into a soft glow of torchlight, he had risen above the animal level at which he'd been functioning for the past thirty seconds or so and felt, if not like a fully fledged warrior, then at least like a human being. Still groggy, he crawled up the first few steps until he was satisfied that he was out of sight from the throne-room. Then he got to his feet. There was little choice. To return the way he had come would be suicidal. He must clamber his way up this staircase – one of what seemed to be an interminable number riddling the Zakhan's palace – and pray that what lay above him was no worse than what lay behind. Yet the prospect was gloomy. He couldn't keep ascending higher and ever higher within the palace – at some stage he'd have to return to ground-level and find some unguarded portal through which he could escape into the city outside. Except, he thought glumly, trying to push back the rivers of despair that were threatening to drown him, there was little chance that there would be any such thing as an unguarded portal: the Zakhan would have given instructions that every means of egress from the palace be secured. There was no time for thought. He forced his protesting legs to take the stairs two at a time. Within a minute he found himself on a broad landing, gloomily lit by a bubbling torch. To one side there was a heavy-looking, utilitarian door. Lone Wolf thought for a second of trying it, but then decided that it looked as if it led to nothing more promising than a cupboard. He continued climbing. From here the stairs ran straight ahead of him and he could see a more brightly lit walkway above. Set into the walkway was another door, one whose black basalt face was panelled. The opulence of its forged bronze handle suggested that it might lead to somewhere more promising. It was secured by a wrought-iron drawbar. Just then the door beside him opened and a uniformed member of the Zakhan's guard emerged. The man was obviously as astonished as Lone Wolf himself.

The Book of the Magnakai // 17 "By the blood of the Majhan!" swore the guard, dropping the crossbow he had been carrying. His hand leapt to his sword. Lone Wolf had no wish to pause and fight. He reached out and grabbed the Vassagonian by the front of his jellabah and, twisting powerfully, threw him so that he crashed, limbs flailing, backwards down the stairs. Then Lone Wolf was off upwards again, the furious shouts of the sprawled guard ringing in his ears. The man's yelling must have alerted others who'd been behind that unprepossessing door, for Lone Wolf had barely reached the walkway when a crossbow bolt grazed his shoulder, making him dive for cover behind the walkway's low parapet. Even lying flat he was barely protected from the landing below. Two more darts ricocheted off the stone lip, missing him by inches to strike the wall beyond and clatter to the floor. He slithered as quickly as he could towards the door. He cursed the drawbar bitterly. To reach up and pull down on the handle, then shove the door open, would have exposed him to the crossbow fire for a second, maybe two at worst. As it was he was going to have to half-stand in order to drag that Naar-inspired bar across. For an instant he hated the mute piece of iron as if it were Haakon himself. More and more crossbow bolts were chiselling into the wall above him now, dropping around and even on top of him, their force fortunately spent. He was amazed that the Vassagonian guards didn't think to take the staircase by storm and attack him as he lay vulnerable here: to judge by the way they were able to keep up the hail of missiles there must be at least a score of them down there. His reputation for ferocity must have been exaggerated a hundredfold by word-of-mouth tellings and retellings of his exploits. They were afraid of him. Then, from further below, he heard the heavy tramp of iron-shod boots and realized that the guards must have summoned a troop of Drakkarim to finish the job. Why risk a single Vassagonian life when they could call upon the minions of the Darklord? Lone Wolf cursed again. Even a single Drakkar was a dangerous assailant: if a group of them attacked him he was surely doomed – especially since the Vassagonians would keep up their crossbow fire, making it virtually impossible for him to stand and fight. There was no alternative. He'd have to chance his life and grapple with that thrice-accursed drawbar. He breathed deeply three times, called down upon himself the blessing of Ishir, and got to his feet as swiftly as he could. #

The Book of the Magnakai // 18 As Banedon explained to Qinefer, it had been Jenara's idea that he should travel south to Dessi. Qinefer herself had departed for Sommerlund, leaving the two of them in Barrakeesh. As before, they moved where they could about the city, trying to spy on the activities of the Darklands spawn and the vassals whom the forces of Evil had enlisted among the Vassagonians. Whenever they could, they opened the channels of their minds so that the Guildmaster of their order, the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star, could scry there for the morsels of information they had gleaned. But those morsels were so paltry and few, and seemed to be becoming even more so, that the whole exercise had begun to seem futile. They found themselves frustrated by their seeming inability to contribute anything constructive to the cause of Sommerlund aside from, on occasion, the destruction of a Helghast or a Drakkar. They were under strict instructions not to make waves, yet they itched to call up a tsunami – to drown the minions of Darkness who were, more and more, infiltrating Vassagonian society. About the only item of knowledge that they succeeded in culling that seemed to be of any significance was that the powerful nobleman Barraka was planning to raise a host of mercenaries and outlaw rabble to invade Durenor, Sommerlund's southernmost province. Of this they told the Guildmaster, but he gave them no sign that he regarded the matter as of any gravity, and so once again they were left with a deep-rooted feeling of inconsequentiality. (Much later, of course, they were to discover the full implications of their discovery, and of the war that Lone Wolf had waged against Barraka in order to thwart that barbaric tyrant's attempt to raise the spirit of the long-dead Archlord Vashna from its sulphurous tomb deep in the Maakengorge.) In short, Jenara and Banedon felt useless, as if they were colonial governors sent to some minor outpost, miles from the hub of their kingdom and where nothing of import ever happened. In more childish terms, they appeared to be being neglected, their efforts regarded by the central power as naught. Banedon, as the younger of the two – although, being of the second level, the more powerful magician – felt this especially keenly: his was the greater impatience. At last Jenara had an idea for something which Banedon might do which, while probably in itself of little use, would at least distract him from his ever-increasing gloom. All forms of magic practised in the Lastlands were derived from the much more complex system that had once been used by the Elder Magi. Although it was known among the members of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star that the abilities of the few remaining magicians of Dessi were but a pale half-memory of the powers of their long-ago forebears, it might be possible that nevertheless there were skills that could still be communicated to the Brotherhood that would assist them in their struggle against the forces of Darkness. Banedon and herself, she reasoned, being situated in Vassagonia,

The Book of the Magnakai // 19 were geographically probably the closest practitioners of the left-handed path of magic to the magiocracy. While she remained in Barrakeesh, then, why should he not quest southwards to consult the magicians of Dessi and, specifically, their ruling High Council of Elder Wizards? Banedon had grasped at the idea eagerly – anything to distance himself physically from a routine that seemed daily to be becoming more worthless. His journey proved easier and quicker than either of them anticipated. He joined one of the many camel trains that followed the old caravan route southwards through the Dahir Pass and then two hundred miles across open desert to the Oasis of Many Happinesses. After stopping over there for a few days, to rest their own bodies as much as their camels', they journeyed a further two hundred or so miles south through the Dry Main until at last they reached the town of Fio Fadali, where it luxuriated in the cool airs at the shore of the River Khorda. After their long trek through seemingly eternal sand, the sight of so much water appeared to be beyond the powers of the Gods themselves to comprehend. It was at Fio Fadali that Banedon encountered for the first time the dwarfish peoples from the distant mountainous kingdom of Bor. Initially he assumed that they were simply stunted human beings, but soon he found that they were different in many ways, having a culture and customs of their own, as well as a distinctly non-human frame of mind. At first he found himself uncomfortable in their presence, but during the days that he lodged in one of Fio Fadali's few taverns, waiting for a ferry to transport him across the Khorda, he learned to enjoy their company, revelling in their mordant wit and their general good heartedness; even though they were always on the lookout for new ways of earning a Gold Crown wherever they could, not always by the most straightforward of means, they also displayed an affection for the natives of all the lands of Magnamund they encountered – Vassagonians, Dessi, Valerionians, Bautarians . . . and now even a Sommlending who was far from home. They were also, because of their peculiarly childlike acquisitiveness, fanatical gamblers. Among the party with whom Banedon found himself carousing most frequently was a dwarf called Quan. Quan was the captain of a scruffy little tramp ship that most often plied its trade along the Tentarias, calling in at the smaller ports along the coasts of Caron, Chaman, Bautar, Valerion and Dessi, exchanging a cargo of skins here for a chest of precious metals there, or maybe a consignment of ore for a payload of salts and spices; Banedon guessed that on occasion the freight that Quan's ship bore was of a rather less licit nature than any of these, but he knew better than than to ask questions. It would have seemed churlish to make such enquiries of someone who had become a boon drinking companion. Quan had brought his ship

The Book of the Magnakai // 20 this far north and so far up the estuary of the Khorda purely because a rival captain had wagered him a string of camels that he wouldn't be able to. Although addicted to gambling, the dwarfs were no fools: no one was going to throw a die or wager on a game of samor with someone they knew to be a magician. One night in the tavern, however, both Quan and Banedon had consumed so many tankards of the foul but potent local perry that the one was prepared to take on even the most impossible of odds and the other had a mind so befuddled that he doubted whether he could have made a butterfly change the course of its flight, let alone have influenced the flow of the cards. The game they chose was splitsl; the place they chose was the main bar of the tavern – both doubted they would have been able to stagger off in search of somewhere quieter. The hubbub was far more subdued than it would have been in a Sommlending or Durenese inn, but it was still sufficient that they had to raise their voices in order to hear each other – or, at least, so it seemed to them at the time. Splitsl is a simple game – like so many other high-stakes gambling games. There are seventeen numbered cards, of which eight are dealt face-down to each partner; the seventeenth, also face-down, is placed between them. Each player takes it in turns to turn up one of his or her cards, but before doing so wagers as to whether or not it is going to be the 17. The amount of the stake is added to the pool in the centre until one of the players strikes lucky. Should it prove that in fact it is the card in the middle that is the 17, the players fight over the accumulated kitty. Quan was always an audacious gambler, but the perry had made him even more so. As the cards were dealt out by one of his crewmen he looked upon them with eager, avaricious bloodshot eyes, muttering imprecations intermingled with little cries of anticipated triumph. Banedon tried to match his bravado, but succeeded only as far as the bloodshot eyes. At first the stakes were low, and the winnings more or less even, although perhaps Banedon was a Gold Crown or two ahead. When Quan suggested upping the ante Banedon blanched, but he had become too engrossed in the game to do anything but agree. And he began to win – not consistently, but always when the bets had run particularly high. A knot of excited dwarfs gathered around the perry-stickied table and the two swaying contestants. Banedon began to dread the moment – and surely it must come soon – when the central card proved to be the 17. Although he had the advantage of height and bulk over the dwarfish mariner, the other was a wiry little person and by far the more experienced fighter. Ever the stakes rose. At one point it had to be explained to a bleary Banedon that it was impracticable actually to show him the camels.

The Book of the Magnakai // 21 Finally Quan thumped the table a doughty thump. "I wager my ship herself (Ishir bless her and all who in her sail) and her entire crew, much as I love every last one of the darlings, that I shall win this hand!" He jutted out his bristly red beard in defiance as he looked across the sticky oak table at his opponent. "And I, in return," declared Banedon, "I . . . I wager the intimate fla . . . favours of a vein-burstingly lissome, raven-haired, poutingly sumptuous friend of mine!" Even in his current state, he was able to mutter a swift prayer to Ishir that Jenara never, ever heard about this. Then, more slowly, an even worse thought penetrated his gluish brain: what if he lost? But by now it was too late to retract the bet, for the cards had been drawn. A coin was tossed, and it was deemed that Banedon should be the one to start. He began cautiously, wagering ten Gold Crowns that his first card would be the 17. It was the 5. Quan contemptuously tossed twenty Gold Crowns onto the table between them. The 2. As the game progressed and the pile of coins grew higher, Banedon tried to force his mind to concentrate on the mathematics of the game. As far as he could reckon – and he was having some difficulty doing so – with three cards left in front of him and three in front of his opponent, there was a one-in-six chance that the next card that he turned up would be the 17. Assuming, of course, that the 17 wasn't the card in the centre of the table: taking that eventuality into account, Quan had the statistical advantage, since he would assuredly win the ensuing fight. It was therefore a good idea for Banedon to start betting very heavily indeed, in the hope that Quan would be unable to meet his stakes and therefore forced to drop out. The entire tavern had grown still. The tension was almost tangible. Beads of sweat ran down every brow. There wasn't an unbated breath in the house. "I wager the Kingdom of Sommerlund on my next card!" cried Banedon with quavering defiance. Quan looked across at him, bushy eyebrows beetling with suspicion. "You sure you can do that?" he said. "Am I not King Ulnar's eldest son?" said Banedon gravely, thinking to himself: I do hope he doesn't realize there are two possible answers to that question. The dwarf muttered surly and still dubious noises, but nodded his assent.

The Book of the Magnakai // 22 Banedon closed his eyes. He prayed. With his few still-functioning ganglia he cobbled together a spell to alter the number on the face of the card to "17". He turned it up. There was a prolonged "aaaaah" from the spectators. There was a prolonged and highly imaginative curse from Quan, but fortunately it was in his own tongue, so none but his own crewmen could understand it – and they were accustomed to their skipper's inventive use of language. The next day, heads throbbing, they used the ship to cross the Khorda and there, because Banedon had no further use for it, sold it to a Bisiltanian merchant whose own vessel had mysteriously sunk during the night. With a band of merry, jesting, hirsute porters and guards surrounding him, Banedon set off to encounter the dangers of the jungles of Dessi. # A ricocheting crossbow dart nicked the flesh just above Lone Wolf's eye, and he winced. The Naar-inspired drawbar seemed not to have been used for a long time, and it grated unwillingly against the basalt, resisting him as he tugged on it. A spatter of rock-dust filled his face as ricocheting dart narrowly missed his head. He crouched his shoulders, trying to make himself a smaller target, acutely aware of the fact that his back was unprotected – even more so when a dart snagged his cloak, dangling from the hem. He thanked Ishir that the Vassagonian palace guards were finding it difficult to sight their crossbows in the confined space. Still the drawbar defied him. His luck couldn't hold out much longer. And then at last, with a screech of protest, the bar shot out of its bolthole with such speed that his left hand was caught between its end and the wall. Swearing at the pain, he wrenched his hand free and pulled the door open, instantly diving behind it so that he was shielded from the continuing hail of darts. He found himself in a vaulted torchlit corridor, at the end of which was a rather stately looking flight of stairs. There was daylight coming from somewhere at the top of these stairs. This part of the palace seemed to be little used, for there were cobwebs and dust everywhere; significantly, a large statue of the late Zakhan Moudalla still embellished the corridor – something that, now Kimah had come to power, would no longer have been tolerated in one of the more often frequented regions. The remains of a single torch guttered in a wall embrasure; there was clearly little life left in it. Lone Wolf slammed the door behind him, but there was no obvious way of bolting it from this side. Besides, he could hear the

The Book of the Magnakai // 23 heavy, crunching tread of another troop of Drakkarim coming down the stairway towards him. The source of daylight was blotted out. Without pausing to think, he dived behind the statue, wishing that the torch might have chosen to expire just a few moments earlier than it was obviously going to. He was just in time. There were a dozen of the armoured warriors. In this poor light the luminescence of the painted grotesqueries on their demonic face-masks was hideously stark. Lone Wolf cringed into the space behind the statue. Fortunately the Drakkarim were intent on their purpose, for they hurried past him, their harsh, laboured, grunting breath filling the corridor with echoes. Their swords were drawn, so clearly they had been informed that he was somewhere in this region of the palace. They charged through the stone door at the end of the corridor, and Lone Wolf could hear them running at full speed along the landing where he had sheltered himself from the hail of crossbow fire. Then he heard them meet the troop of Drakkarim that had been hurrying up from beneath. There was a loud crashing and the sound of hoarse shouts of dismay and confusion. Lone Wolf gave one of his rare grins and sprinted for the stairs, running up them two at a time, the Sommerswerd drawn once again in case he encountered any further opposition. At the top of the stairs he found an open hatchway. He burst out into the sunlight, revelling in it briefly – it seemed to have been a century since he had last breathed the open air. He wondered for a second why such a grand stairway should have been built leading up to a hatchway on what was obviously the palace roof, but decided to leave the conundrum until later. It wouldn't take long for the two troops of Drakkarim to realize what had happened and come thundering after him. Even on the roof of the Imperial Palace there was a certain grandeur. All around him, stretching away for hundreds of yards on every side, were towers and turrets, each topped by the distinctive Vassagonian onion-shaped dome; flags fluttered high on poles above many of them. The domes themselves were decorated in gold leaf or bronze; the latter showed streaks of coppery-green patina. The flat roof in between the towers was covered with pinkish-grey marble chips; through the gravel a winding path had been picked out in tiles of streaked green slate, bleached by the Sun to a pale beauty. He didn't want to follow the path – obviously it must have been along it that the Drakkarim warriors had come, and equally obviously it must lead to some centre of activity, where he was likely to encounter others of their kind. Yet, if he cut across the

The Book of the Magnakai // 24 gravel, he would leave a trail that would be clear for all to see. He swithered. Exhaustion suddenly hit him: even though it had been only a few hours since he'd entered the palace, he seemed hardly to have paused for breath. Shrugging his shoulders, he followed the path willy-nilly, keeping a look-out for some place where he might be able to leave it without making such an obvious spoor. He realized that he was stumbling as he went, peering from side to side through narrowing eyes, his body seeming preternaturally heavy as if it were a burden impossible for him to carry. And then he saw it. Off to the right of the path there was a bell-tower, a structure built, more prosaically than the rest, of simple brick; there was a polished wooden door in its side. Its rectangular base was only about a yard away from the slate tiles: he could easily step across the intervening gravel and find shelter in there. Of course, the Drakkarim might think of this, but he doubted it: a unifying characteristic of all the minions of the Darklords – save the Nadziranim – was their stupidity. Making a jump of even a yard proved to be an extraordinarily taxing business, but he managed it. The door proved, fortunately, to be unlocked. Inside he found there was a broad ledge surrounding the bell; the bellrope descended into a blackness beneath. Sunlight dappled in through polygonal spaces in the ornate brickwork. Ruefully praying that no one took it into their heads to start ringing the bell, he sat down with a sigh of utter fatigue, his back against the tower's internal wall, his hand on the hilt of the Sommerswerd, and shut his eyes. # Half an hour later his Kai gestalt – the spiritual awareness that came into being through the fusion of his own soul-stuff with that of the Sommerswerd's – nagged him awake. You must leave here swiftly, Lone Wolf, it said urgently in his mind. Its voice always reminded him, for some reason he had never been able to identify, of an old man seated in a throne of ice in the midst of a raging blizzard. The trouble was that the gestalt, again like a crotchety old man, was capricious about its interventions in his life. Sometimes it would help him when he least expected it; at other times, when death seemed inescapable, it would ignore all his supplications and leave him to his own devices. He had the sense that its concern was not with his own personal fate but with that of Sommerlund and, beyond that, of the fortunes of the Sun God Kai himself. But now it was insisting: It will soon be the hour for evening prayers to the Majhan, and all the bells of the palace will be tolled.

The Book of the Magnakai // 25 Lone Wolf felt considerably refreshed, even by such a short sleep. His Kai learning had given him astonishing powers of recuperation, and the gestalt had, as always, added its own indefinable influence to assist his recovery. Clearly it had kept a better account of the passage of time than he had during these past few hectic hours. He got to his feet swiftly and peered out through the holes in the brickwork to see if the coast were clear. All seemed well. There was no sign of life along the vista of pinkish-grey gravel. But, if he couldn't see any sign of life, he could certainly hear one. There was a gently raucous cawing noise on the air. It seemed to be coming from somewhere off to his right. He walked firmly around the ledge, confident that his Kai gestalt would warn him if the time for the ringing of the bell became too imminent. Once again he squinted through the gaps in the brickwork, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the setting Sun. As he watched, an itikar swooped down out of the sky, the forms of the great bird and its rider starkly silhouetted against the fiery backdrop. Lone Wolf's hope, which had begun to wane, suddenly surged once more. He had come across itikars once before – back when the Vassagonian mercenaries of Barraka had been besieging the city of Ruanon. The memory was not a particularly pleasant one. Had it not been for the intervention of Petra he might have met his death at the hands of the rider of one of these mighty predatory birds. He smiled as he thought of Petra, with her short yellow hair, her military primness, and her quickness of thought. After the itikar and its rider had been destroyed she'd discovered that the Vassagonian had dropped an onyx medallion. Later she'd used the trinket to fool the leader of a band of mercenaries into allowing them to pass as they fled across country towards Maaken – again probably saving their lives. Still later he'd begged the bijou from her as a talisman, a token of good fortune. Since then he'd often felt it among the rest of the clutter in his pockets – the other souvenirs of past campaigns – rubbing its smooth, shiny, warmly-cold surface. Slaves were hurling a rope up to the rider, who caught it neatly and tied it to a large metal ring that hung from his leather saddle. There was a creaking of some hidden machinery as bird and rider were slowly drawn to the ground, the itikar being apparently unflustered by all this, flapping its wings slowly as it eased downwards. In the wild the huge black predators, Lone Wolf had learnt in Ruanon, nested in their eyries high among the peaks of the Dahir and Vakar mountains, to the south and west of Barrakeesh. They were quite capable of seizing a calf or even a human being as their prey, flying on those great, powerfully muscled wings back to their lofty fastnesses with their struggling victim securely held in

The Book of the Magnakai // 26 those wickedly curved talons. It had taken many generations – and many deaths – before the Vassagonians had been able to tame some captured itikars and breed from them a more docile stock . . . "more docile" being, of course, a relative term. The cawing he had heard must surely have come from a gathering of the birds somewhere just over the lip of the roof. Presumably this was a centre where they were tethered ready for use by the nobility and military of Vassagonia on their longer-distance journeys across the Dry Main. Yet, if an itikar would receive a Vassagonian as its rider, might it not just as easily accept a Sommlending? Looking warily from side to side, he slid out of the door of the bell-tower, leapt across the small moat of gravel – even now he was concerned not to leave any unnecessary signs of his passage that the Drakkarim might notice – and scurried along the path towards where he had seen the itikar come in to land. Sure enough, on the roof of an extension of the palace, about twenty feet below where he was crouching, looking over the edge, there was an array of a dozen or so circular platforms. At the centre of each was a post. Most of the platforms were empty, but on four of them were moored the huge birds, their claws wrapped around stout perches some two feet high. They were preening themselves in between cawing territorial abuse at each other. As he watched he saw one turn to pull a vast haunch of raw meat from a wicker-metal basket by the side of its platform. Lone Wolf felt a sort of sick fascination as the itikar held down the big piece of flesh with one of its mighty feet and tore at the bleeding mess with its cruelly sharp beak, one of its orange-and-black eyes seeming to stare directly at him. He felt even sicker when he realized the origin of the meat. The Vassagonians had cruel ways of disposing of the remains of their enemies. The rider was leaving the landing-stage now, followed by his entourage of cowed-looking slaves. They vanished into the main part of the palace directly beneath where Lone Wolf was concealed, presumably through a doorway, leaving only one sentry on duty. Here, surely, was his golden opportunity. The question was: how was he going to get to the landing-stage? He eyed the twenty-foot drop with disfavour. The chances of twisting his ankle or winding himself if he simply jumped down were too high to be acceptable. Besides, he had no guarantee that the door through which the rider and his slaves had disappeared was closed: he might find himself dropping neatly down in front of half an army of his foes. Surely there must be some way down from this level that the Vassagonians themselves used? After all, it was reasonable to assume that the troop of Drakkarim that he had so recently evaded must have reached the roof from this lower level.

The Book of the Magnakai // 27 He looked around him and immediately saw that indeed there was a way. Off to his left a crude set of steps ran down from the topmost level, where he was, to a roof parallel to the landing-stage. The two lower surfaces were joined by a narrow bridge – barely more than a sort of stone gangplank. Lone Wolf winced as he saw it. That was going to be the tricky part. If he were going to be able to surprise the sentry, he would have to rush at full speed across that strait stretch of smooth stone, above a dizzying drop, knowing all the time that if he made too much noise he was likely to bring down upon himself the wrath of however many Drakkarim and Vassagonian soldiers might be in the vicinity. Still, he couldn't see any alternative. Climbing down the steps proved no problem, although he took care not to look too often to either side, aware of the vertiginous drop but not wanting to be reminded of it. Once down on the lower level he unsheathed the Sommerswerd, and waited for its soul-stuff to come flooding into him in its warm way. He prayed that, for just a few crucial seconds, the sentry would chance not to look in his direction. Something odd was happening to that gewgaw Petra had picked up so long ago in Ruanon. It seemed to be reacting to the proximity of the itikars, becoming warm to the point that it was almost unpleasantly hot to the touch. Nonetheless, he did touch it, and felt a sort of mental sonorousness come into his consciousness. That must be it! The thing that the Vassagonian rider had dropped wasn't just an ornamental trinket – it was a way of communicating with his itikar. It must have been through using the properties of stones such as this one that the Vassagonians had been able to tame the wild birds all those centuries ago. He thrust all such speculations from his mind for the moment. Although he was totally exposed to view here, he nevertheless found himself looking around in case of observers. Satisfied that there were none, he sprinted pell-mell for the narrow bridge. The sentry heard him almost at once. The Vassagonian turned and brought up his spear with a shout of mingled astonishment and wrath. It was the last sound he ever made. With a full-blooded, two-handed whistling swing of the Sommerswerd Lone Wolf sent his head toppling from his shoulders. The corpse collapsed backwards, blood spurting from the wreckage of its neck. Lone Wolf leapt over the still-twitching carcase and hared for the nearest occupied landing-platform, groping in his left-hand pocket for the onyx medallion. There was a hoarse yell from his right. Glancing in that direction, he saw that he'd been correct in his suspicion that the

The Book of the Magnakai // 28 portal from the interior of the palace might not be closed. Rather, it was merely an open archway, beyond which he could see all sorts of riding equipment and armoured accoutrements hanging from rows of hooks. More significantly, through the archway were blundering about half a dozen Drakkarim. In their enthusiasm to slaughter him they were getting in each other's way – and it was probably this that saved him. He jumped up onto the low platform and made for the itikar where it watched him steadfastly from its low perch. There seemed to be no malice in the orange-and-black eye it turned towards him, just an icy alienness. Lone Wolf threw himself towards its saddle. As he did so, the bird beat its gargantuan wings and pulled itself as far aloft as its tethering rope would permit. A blade-sharp talon sliced the air inches from his eyes, and instinctively he threw up his right arm, still clutching the bloodied Sommerswerd, to protect his face from the great hooked beak. With his left hand he dug deep in his pocket. The first object that came to his fingers was a doomwolf's tooth, which he threw from him with disgust – the trophy had been a valued one but not now, not now! Then he had the hotly pulsing onyx medallion in his hand. He held the object up over his head and tried to think reassuring thoughts in the direction of the itikar. To his astonishment, the beast immediately calmed, and settled itself back down onto its perch. Lone Wolf threw himself astride it and slashed its mooring-rope with the Sommerswerd, which he then rapidly sheathed as the bird began to advance along its perch, obviously eager for the sky. Fumbling with haste, he grabbed its reins – and only just in time, for at that very moment he was jerked backwards in the saddle as the itikar took to the air. The tip of a Drakkar sword tore at his leggings; the owner of the sword died immediately as a claw raked across his face, shattering his death-mask and sending him crashing across the landing-stage to go tumbling away into the empty air. The beating of the itikar's wings was a thunder in Lone Wolf's ears. The bird let out an ear-shattering screech as it spiralled higher and higher above the palace, leaving the Drakkarim in a dumbfounded circle, staring thwartedly upwards, shouting their frustration and waving their weapons in futile fury. Lone Wolf, clinging to the reins for dear life, hardly had the time to glance down at them. He knew that he was in mortal danger of following the dead Drakkar down into the palace gardens. He'd ridden wild horses before, but he'd never experienced anything like this. Despite the coldness of the wind against his head, there was sweat streaming down his face.

The Book of the Magnakai // 29 The beast lurched to one side, and the onyx medallion slipped from his fingers. For an instant he knew he was doomed. Without the medallion he had no way of controlling his mount, which would surely cast him off and then seize his falling body in its claws to be devoured at leisure. He saw Sommerlund and all the rest of the Lastlands being similarly devoured by the forces of Evil. But then, with a frantic contortion that almost threw him from the saddle, he caught the object at the full outstretch of his arm, pulling it towards his heart as if it were some sort of object of adoration. And then at last the ride became smoother as the bird picked up speed and the beating of its wings became more regular. The tension in Lone Wolf's chest began to ease, and he sat up more erectly in the saddle. The glittering turrets and towers of Barrakeesh were children's toys now: beneath him stretched the sands of the Dry Main. They were coloured a muted orange by the light of the Sun, only an arc of which could now be seen above the horizon, off to his right. Soon he was above the eerily glittering flats of the great salt lake the Vassagonians called Inrahim; they too were touched by the same warmly ochrous hue. Lone Wolf let out a wild whoop of exhilaration. He was free at last – free from the accursed city of Barrakeesh and its infernal palace. Then his heart sank. As if in answer to his triumphant yell there was a wild chorus of hideous shrieks. He glanced behind him. Much of the sky seemed to be filled by a flock of Kraan, their clawed leathery wings plucking at the air as they strove towards him. Astride each rode what he assumed from this distance to be a Drakkar. He was perhaps a mile ahead of them. But they were gaining fast.

The Book of the Magnakai // 30 CHAPTER TWO The War in the Air There was barely any light left in the sky, so Qinefer and Banedon moved inside while he continued to tell her his story. Banedon and his troop of dwarfish followers journeyed south through the jungles of Dessi without any untoward adventures, and within less than a fortnight were at Elzian, where Banedon presented himself before the Magi Regnanti – the High Council of Elder Wizards – in the imposing Tower of Truth. He explained the plight of the Lastlands to these venerable people, and at first they were willing to help him in any way they could. But, once they had looked into the furthest crannies of his mind and discovered locked therein the abilities of second-level left-handed magic, as taught to him by his old mentor Loi-Kymar, they had begun to shake their heads sadly. "We can't help you, Banedon," said the speaker of the council ruefully. He was a stooped and gnarled, yet somehow dignified, man of incredible age called Rimoah; for some indefinable reason he reminded Banedon very much of the Guildmaster of his own order, the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. "The magic you people of the north have built upon what our ancestors gave you is now beyond anything we possess. And" – an incredulous upward squint of the rheumy old eyes – "you say that there are yet higher levels than this?" "Yes." Banedon shrugged, embarrassed. He always found great difficulty in believing of himself that, despite all appearances, he had thanks to the kindly tutelage of Loi-Kymar become quite a powerful master of the art of left-handed magic. "We believe that there are higher levels. One of our number – Vonotar – believed that he had discovered such a level when he married left-handed with right-handed magic, and certainly in so doing he possessed himself of great power, but it seemed that this power, at least in his hands, could be used only for evil." Rimoah shook his head and clucked sadly. "The right-handed path of magic contains only those elements of the magic the Elder Magi brought into the world that were evil. Our ancestors, as soon as they realized that there was some base metal among the pure gold of their magic, divested themselves of it. Little could they have realized that this dross would have been seized upon by these vile creatures of which you speak, the Nadziranim. No, no, no, my young friend" – and here Banedon began to wonder if the elder was going to shake his head right off his shoulders – "to reunite the two is merely to return the imperfections to the pure strain."

The Book of the Magnakai // 31 It was a couple of days later, and Banedon was just setting about planning his departure home to Vassagonia, when Rimoah came to him again. "There is a chance, however," said the old man in his usual abrupt way, as if continuing a conversation that had only just been left off, "that you may be able to help us." "How may I help you?" said Banedon, bowing deeply in courtesy. He still found the respect in which Rimoah and the other elders obviously held him very disconcerting. "There is a creature called the Gagadoth which has taken to itself all the land around the Chasm of Gorgoron – slaughtering all who try to resist it. Even the port of Gologo is at risk from its depredations." "And you wish me to fight against this creature?" Banedon quailed. He wished that Lone Wolf were here. Fighting monsters was Lone Wolf's trade, not his. "No, no, nothing like that." The elder looked at him sharply, as if the youth were a few spells short of a grimoire. "We have few warriors, but of those some of the bravest have ridden in vain against the creature – and paid with their lives for their temerity. The Gagadoth cannot be fought by physical means alone. It seems to be only partly of this time and partly of some other, so that, even if the portion of it that is in this time is harmed, the beast simply pulls more of itself in from that other time." He wheezed asthmatically and Banedon looked at him in alarm. "We have tried using our magic against the monster, of course," the elder continued a minute or two later, "but none of our sorcery seems able to prevail against it. Your second-level left-handed magic, on the other hand . . ." And it was a hand with which he gestured towards Banedon. An old, shrivelled hand through the skin of which Banedon seemed almost able to see the bones themselves. It was turned palm upwards, as if in supplication. "You wish me to go to the . . . the Chasm of Gorgoron and confront this . . . this beast . . . magically?" he stuttered. "No, not even that. All that we ask is that you lend your magic to some of us – perhaps a dozen of the most courageous of us all – so that they may venture against the Gagadoth." The old man's tones were wheedling. "`Lend'!" exclaimed Banedon, stupefied. "Why! All the magic at my command is yours for the asking, as a gift. I would have offered it to you before . . . but . . . but I'd have thought it an impertinence to do so. Here, let you yourself be the repository of all the magical knowledge that I have." He reached out impetuously and the tips of the fingers of both his hands into the old man's still-outstretched palm. Both of them closed their eyes, and Banedon felt the energy draining from his body at the same time as everything that he knew of

The Book of the Magnakai // 32 second-level magic was transmitted from his own mind to that of the Rimoah. Moments later, when the process was done, he was sagging at the knees. He sat down abruptly and put his head in his hands. It was some moments before he felt strong enough even to open his eyes. When he did so, he was astonished. At first the man standing before him seemed to be a stranger, but then he realized that it was Rimoah – but a Rimoah who had been transformed. Although the magus still seemed of incredible ancientness, he was standing erect to his full height, his back ramrod-stiff. "Is this what my magic has done to you?" said Banedon wonderingly. "No," said Rimoah, and his voice, although it was recognizably his, was now much stronger and firmer. "No, this is how I always appear, except when I wish not to. We of the Council of Elder Wizards could have taken your magic from you, you know, when first we looked inside your mind, but we chose not to – that is not the way of the Magiocracy of Dessi. We wanted you to give it to us as a gift – and also we wanted to test you, to ensure that the branch of magic that you practise had not corrupted you the way you tell us that other forms of magic corrupted your countryman, Vonotar. We treasure your gift not just because indeed your second-level magic is far more powerful than our own but also because you had the goodness of heart to give it to us. And the humility that you displayed before your giving shows us that your heart is pure and free from all taint of corruption." Banedon winced. The occasional thought he'd had about Jenara these past few months could hardly be called . . . But Rimoah ignored him and continued speaking. "There is no such beast as the Gagadoth – and there never has been. We invented it as a means to test you for your wisdom, for only a fool would have ventured alone against a creature of unknown powers armed only with a form of magic that might prove ineffectual against it. A warrior with your advanced knowledge, perhaps – yes, perhaps someone like that could have undertaken such a quest. But someone like you – armed only with your magic and your fear – would have risked destroying not only yourself but all the magical lore contained within the chambers of your young mind." A kindly smile from the icy face of the ancient man. "There is wisdom in timely cowardice, Banedon, and you displayed that wisdom." Banedon gulped. As far as he was concerned it had been just plain, straightforward . . . Again the old man ignored him. "In return for the gift that you have given us, Banedon, we have a gift for you. Come, and I shall show it to you." He led the stunned young magician from the building where they had been speaking and . . .

The Book of the Magnakai // 33 # "I hear it approaching now," said Qinefer, interrupting Banedon's narrative for the first time in a long while. Through the windows of the villa by the oasis in Vassagonia there came a thin, aethereal whining noise, as of a buzzing fly in a different room. "You know?" he said, startled, looking into her strange eyes. "I've known for some days now," she said. "I read the patterns, and at first they showed me you riding among the clouds, and then later they showed me how you would be able to do so." She smiled in the way that she had, so that the object of her smile felt as if bathed in the warmth of a summer's day. "I knew that you were trying to tell me that the Skyrider was on its way here. And I could have told you most of your story for you," she added softly, putting her warm dark hand over his, "before you even began. But I wanted to hear it from your own lips, so that I could see it all through your eyes and live it all through your body. Thank you for telling me your story, Banedon. You have given me a gift, just as you gave a gift to the magicians of Dessi." Again she smiled. He looked into her alien eyes and, whereas before he had come to accept them yet nevertheless found that their strangeness clashed with the soft contours of her face, now for the first time he saw how perfectly they fitted in. "I'll be gone by the time you return from the places your pattern will lead you to," she said to his silence. "Tell Lone Wolf that I still think of him. Your pattern will lead you to him, and very soon now. I know you want to help him again. Just follow your pattern and it will take you to him at the moment when he needs you the most." Her face was utterly impassive now, betraying no emotion at all – no wistfulness, no grief, no sorrow of parting, no sense of something ending. Outside, beyond the toa trees of the oasis, the whining noise increased in pitch as the Skyrider settled slowly towards the sand. # The initial shock almost threw Lone Wolf from the saddle. He had seen no Kraan since arriving in Vassagonia and had come to assume that the only types of spawn to have come through the Birthplace were the Helghast which, like the humanoid Drakkarim, could pass with at least a certain degree of ease among the native Vassagonians – the Helghast because of their limited abilities to mimic human form and the Drakkarim

The Book of the Magnakai // 34 because everyone looks much alike when clad in black armour and wearing a full facial mask. The Kraan were something else. They weren't as large as an itikar, like the one on which he was riding, but they were certainly as vicious – possibly more so. Created like the other spawn in dungeons deep beneath the Darklords' fortress-city of Helgedad, far away in the heartland of the Darklands, they had great leathery bat-like wings, along whose leading edges were needle-sharp claws that could eviscerate a human being from groin to throat without, seemingly, any effort at all. These claws, and their cruelly serrated bills, gave the lie to their fluttering flight and their odd, cackling chuckles, which might otherwise have led one to look upon them as perhaps friendly creatures. They were not. They were wholly vicious, seeming to delight in acts of the most barbarous sadism. And they certainly couldn't be passed off as any part of the Vassagonian fauna. They must have been kept hidden away until now, safe from prying eyes. Haakon must want Lone Wolf very badly indeed if he were prepared to betray the presence of the Kraan to the gaze of the Vassagonian populace. If the Kraan caught him, Lone Wolf would be as good as dead. He was hopelessly outnumbered. He reckoned that, at this altitude, there must be about another hour left before the fall of night and the possible sanctuary of darkness. Already, beneath him, the last of the orange light was dying from the saltflats of Lake Inrahim, but it would be suicidal to risk descending there: the Kraan would be upon him like vultures on a dying man. He must stay aloft and try to outrun or outwit the flying spawn for long enough that he could descend covertly, at a time and place of his own choosing, leaving them confusedly searching the skies above. Sending a gentle mental urging through the onyx medallion to his mount, he switched direction, heading at random southwards towards the distant Dahir Mountains. He pleaded with the bird to increase its speed and it did so – but only a little. He knew that it was already flying at the utmost rate of which it was capable. It, too, had sensed the evil of the Kraan – or perhaps it had merely picked up his own sense of loathing for the vile creatures. Lone Wolf looked behind him, and his heart sank as he saw that the Kraan were inexorably gaining on them. Holding onto both reins and medallion with his left hand, trying to cling even more tightly with his knees to the sides of the saddle and his feet to the stirrup-cups, terrifiedly aware of the precariousness of his perch, he unsheathed the Sommerswerd. Its soul-stuff swirled into him, but he had the uneasy sensation that it did so reluctantly, as if it, too, were in a state of terror.

The Book of the Magnakai // 35 He called upon his Kai gestalt, but in its perverse way it refused to respond to his appeals. His mouth set in a grim line. The times when the gestalt failed to acknowledge his entreaties seemed to be those when his life was most at risk. For a moment he hated it for its habit of thinking only in the longer term. Perhaps it had already decided that someone else – Qinefer, perhaps? – might better be able to lead Sommerlund to salvation and repel the forces of Evil. She had had no formal Kai training, and yet already she had begun to display many of the attributes of the Kai. With the assistance of the gestalt, should it somehow be able to transfer its allegiance to her ... Although this was entirely the wrong moment – his fate would be decided within the next hour at most - he found himself thinking of Qinefer. Doing so somehow seemed to push back the encroaching walls of horror from his consciousness. He smiled for a moment as he recalled the good times they'd had together, and the image of her face came into his mind: she appeared to be smiling back at him. But then he frowned. She had seemed so . . . so strange the last time he'd seen her, in one of the halls of the Imperial Palace. He hadn't stopped to think about it too much at the time, but how had she got there in the first place? She'd been babbling about things he didn't understand – about mazes and patterns of consciousness and behaviour – and, now that, in this icy moment of desperation his brain was beginning to think about it all so much more clearly than it had at the time, he was beginning to wonder if, in a way, she hadn't been saying some sort of a farewell to him. And there had been a strangeness in her eyes . . . The image was shattered as sudden agony lanced through his mind, seeming to torment individually every last nerve cell of his body, shooting pain down through his arms and his legs. His entire body stiffened in anguish. At first the pain was too great for him to be able to think, but then his mind fought its way through the enveloping acid clouds of torment to bring sanity back to him. He'd experienced this sensation before – and it was one that he wished he could forget. Some of the spawn had the ability to emit a mental ray that could torture a person's mind like this. The itikar shuddered beneath him and frantically twisted its head from side to side. It let out a great cawing bleat of agony. Clearly it, too, was being tormented by the blast of mental power. Lone Wolf tried to sooth it, beaming whatever calmness was left in his mind to the bird through the medallion, but he sensed that his efforts were having little effect. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see a Helghast astride one of the Kraan. What he saw was even worse. True, there was a Kraan swooping down in its loathsome fluttering way to attack him, but

The Book of the Magnakai // 36 its rider was not a Helghast but a Vordak – one of the Darklords' hideous undead lieutenants. It was shrieking its malignity at him as the Kraan dropped. Spreading its skeletal red-robed arms, the Vordak rose in its seat and, with a scream that seemed to have been drawn all the way from the heart of Naar himself, threw itself across the intervening air to land on the back of the itikar, directly behind Lone Wolf. The Vordak dug its long, sharp bony fingers deep into the bird's spine, and the itikar contorted in fresh agony. Lone Wolf, already barely able to see through the tears of his own pain, lost his grip on the reins as the huge bird bucked in the air. He was jolted forwards and sideways and, had it not been for the tight grip of his knees, must surely have fallen to his doom, thousands of feet below. Which seemed to be his imminent fate anyway. Already the itikar seemed to have lost its ability to beat its wings. The stabbing fingers of the Vordak, penetrating its spine, must have paralyzed some important nerve. It was slipping sideways and downwards. While it might glide for a short time, it couldn't be long before both it and its hapless riders plummeted towards the merciless flats of the great salt lake. Seizing the reins once more, Lone Wolf raised the Sommerswerd and the ancient blade began to glow with an all-pervading golden light. The Vordak saw it, and shrank from it, raising one bony arm as if to shield the eyeless sockets of its skull from the glare. With its other blood-drenched hand it scrabbled for the black iron mace that hung at its belt. It was too late. As the Vordak raised the mace the Sommlending blade cleaved clear through the weapon's haft, leaving a splash of blue flame as the mace's studded head vanished groundwards. The itikar, now that the Vordak's horny fingers were no longer in it, seemed to recover a little in its flight. The juddering as it did so once again almost shook Lone Wolf from the bird's back, but his grip on the reins was more secure now. The Vordak was staring impotent hatred at him. It threw away the haft of its weapon and raised its rotting hands, preparing to leap forwards and grab him by the throat. The Sommerswerd swung round again, just as the Vordak sprang, and bit into the undead's neck, tearing through its skeletally thin body and shearing it diagonally all the way from collarbone to hip. The top part of the Vordak was whipped away by the rushing air. From the truncated stump of its body gushed a great fountain of green ichor that splattered over the itikar's back and much of Lone Wolf's clothing; some landed on his face and it was with difficulty that he stopped himself from vomiting. Even the bird seemed to be affected by the stench of the acidic fumes.

The Book of the Magnakai // 37 Slowly the lower part of the Vordak toppled sideways, deliquescing as it did so. Tendrils of green steam were torn swiftly away from the remains by the rushing wind. And then the last of the Vordak was gone, falling away towards Lake Inrahim, its path traced by a thin, rapidly dissipated plume of green. Lone Wolf sheathed the Sommerswerd, shuddering at the prospect that at some stage he'd have to clean the Vordak's vile ichor from its blade, and seized the reins with both hands. Although the itikar's wings were beating with some of their old power, they were doing so irregularly, and Lone Wolf was concerned that even this couldn't last – the bird was losing a lot of blood, and must inevitably be weakening. A chilling thought struck him: what if the bird lost consciousness? Still nauseated by the encounter with the Vordak and with the stench of its foul bodily fluids still strong in his nostrils, he clenched the itikar's powerful back between his knees and leaned forward in the saddle, mentally exhorting the mighty bird to use all of its flagging resources of strength to carry him onward, onward to the south. Behind him in the sky, the flock of Kraan were screeching and cackling, coming ever closer to him. # Haakon's mailed fist hammered into the long refectory table, splintering its surface. Here, in one of the anterooms that the Zakhan used for his own domestic arrangements rather than for affairs of state, gems and precious metals were conspicuous by their absence. The late Zakhan Moudalla had had a predilection for figurative landscapes, and several of these decorated the otherwise spartan walls. The floor was covered in tiles of different woods, their grains arranged to pleasing effect. "Everything," thundered the Darklord, "is beginning to fall apart in our hands." Kimah, cowering, looked at the remains of the table from which he had been eating, was forced to agree. As if by way of afterthought, the porcelain plate containing the remains of his meal chose this moment to slide down the canted surface and crash to the floor. The slave who had been waiting at the door, startled by this last small noise, fled. Kimah couldn't find it in his heart to blame him. "First," bellowed Haakon, "the woman. Your guards say that they're not certain there ever was a woman, but admit that someone female was definitely being `interrogated' in your torture chambers. The next thing we know after that is that she's succeeded in destroying the Birthplace – and probably in such a

The Book of the Magnakai // 38 way that we'll never be able to construct another like it. Then she seems simply to have walked first out of your piddling little dungeons and then out of your piddling little city without any of your Sharnazim having lifted so much as a finger! What kind of worthless poltroons am I dealing with?" This time it was the wall that bore the brunt of his wrath. One of the pictures jumped off its hook and fell with a smash. "She is no normal woman," said the Zakhan, as quietly as he could. "If you fools of Vassagonians had a brain to share between you, by now she'd be a dead woman," snarled Haakon. His boots made a heavy noise as he paced agitatedly around the wooden floor. Kimah still held the Orb of Death, and he wished it made him feel more powerful. Instead, it had the opposite effect: he felt like a child caught with some brightly coloured trinket that it was obvious hadn't been worth the effort of stealing. He was sure that it would, as Haakon had promised, give him awesome powers in battle against mortal creatures, but their attacks would be trivial by comparison with the wrath of the Darklord. "Sire," he said weakly, "we are mere mortals. The woman possesses a magic unlike anything we've encountered before. It's hardly surprising that . . ." "Magic!" roared Haakon, his whole body seeming to be ablaze with his wrath. "That leads me to the second point. That whelp of a magician and his dunderheaded companion! This time you're Sharnazim actually escorted the scum into the dungeons, and then let them raise an army with all the prisoners they'd released, destroy one of my Helghast, put the Nadziranim we have here into a state of magical shock, and once again walk clear out of the city!" "There were extraneous circumstances," whimpered Kimah. "All the circumstances seem to have been extraneous," hissed the Darklord. He had bent over to put his mask close to Kimah's face, and the quivering Zakhan could smell the fetid deadness of Haakon's breath. Without moving away, Haakon shouted the next few words, almost physically blasting the Vassagonian back off the stool on which he'd been slumped. "And finally the Kai brat!" Haakon resumed his pacing. Kimah didn't know whether this was a good sign or not. The Darklord's rage was reducing him to a jelly. This was a far cry from the cruel pomp he had envisaged during the years of plotting before he had inherited the zakhanate and exercised in reality for only a few brief days. Now he was as abject and snivelling as the meanest of his subjects. His splendid trappings, his countless slaves and the magnificence of his palace were all ironic jeers that echoed around and around in his mind.

The Book of the Magnakai // 39 "The Kai brat," Haakon was mumbling. "He was so close to us that we could have closed a fist and crushed him. But somehow he escaped – thanks, once again, to the incompetence of your guards." "Your Drakkarim . . ." began the Zakhan, but a brutal glare from the Darklord froze the words in his throat. "We can only hope that my minions will succeed in finishing a task that your hirelings proved incapable even of properly starting. Already my Kraan are aloft in the skies of Vassagonia pursuing that rebarbative stripling. We shall soon hear of his death – and then, perhaps, my mind can rest a little more easy." "Your Kraan? But then the people will have seen them! If all of Vassagonia learns of the presence of beings from the Darklands they may rise up and revolt against me!" "Your fate is of little concern to me now," said Haakon icily. Kimah realized that he was staring into the void of death. There was a long silence, broken only by the relentless, crushing tread, tread, tread of Haakon's boots. "Surely he cannot present any danger to you now?" said the Kimah at length, mustering courage from somewhere. "The Book of the Magnakai is almost within your grasp. He's only one man against your hordes, against the might of your weaponry and the magical power of your Nadziranim?" "Yes, yes," said the Darklord, paying little attention, broodily rubbing his chin with the studs on the back of his glove. "Although my Nadziranim are useless to me now. I told you that this trash from the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star had terrified them so much with his abilities that the three of them are huddling somewhere in the palace, terrified for their own skins – as it were. If only I could bring more of them here from the Darklands! But the Birthplace has been destroyed! The whole situation carries me around in circles!" "It's not as if Lone Wolf has the magical powers of the wizard," said Kimah in an attempt to soothe the Darklord's wrath. His failure was spectacular. For a moment Haakon said nothing, but then he slowly turned his mighty head to look at the Vassagonian. "Say that again." "Er . . . it's not as if Lone Wolf has the magical powers of the wizard." "I wish by the very heart of Naar himself that you hadn't said that." The words were a low susurration that reminded the Zakhan of an oily liquid spreading with ever-increasing rapidity over a polished surface. "I only meant . . ."

The Book of the Magnakai // 40 "Naar give me the guts of a storgh for my own folly," said the Darklord, and Kimah was relieved that, at least for a few moments, he was no longer the focus of Haakon's wrath. "Call me a slave," growled the Darklord. Kimah frowned at the seeming irrelevance, but did as he was told. Moments later a nervous young man was pushed into the room. His face was pale and his lips paler as he confronted Haakon's towering might. "Come here," said the Darklord with deceptive gentleness. Unwillingly the slave came forward. Bending forward casually and using the hooked studs on the back of his glove, Haakon easily – almost contemptuously – ripped the man open from throat to groin. The hot smell of offal filled the room. The slave screamed once as he collapsed, and then continued to scream as he lay on the floor, his hands making futile scrabbling gestures as if trying to stuff his intestines back in place. Impatiently, Haakon raised one great boot and stamped down hard on the man's head, shattering his skull and silencing his noise forever. Kimah, appalled, found that he was standing with his back against the wall, his arms spread wide, his palms pressing against the reassuringly cool plasterwork. "Wh – what was that for?" he eventually managed to stutter. Haakon, looking at the mess on the floor and the gobbets of blood on his own boot, said nothing for a moment. When he did speak his voice was gentle, almost cajoling. "It is a fool who slays the bringer of bad tidings," he said, "but those tidings you brought were bad indeed." "I – I brought you no . . ." "Should the Kai swine join forces with the sorcerer, all our earlier calculations may have to be changed," continued the Darklord as if the Zakhan had said nothing. "His tactical skill and his prowess at arms; the wizard's ability to take reality and distort it as he runs it through his fingers . . . But no, perhaps I'm being overly gloomy. They may know nothing of each other. And, if Naar is smiling upon our efforts to serve Him, the whelp may be dead already." Kimah allowed himself to relax. "Besides, nothing – no one – surely no one can stop you discovering the Book of the Magnakai now, sire," he ventured. "Once it has been destroyed, the Kai knave will be no more dangerous to you than an irritating gadfly, to be crushed at your whim." "I wish I could be sure of that," muttered the Darklord. "I'm glad you do not slay the messenger who brings you bad news," said Kimah after another long pause, trying to lighten the atmosphere a little. He gestured expressively towards the heap of broken flesh that had been the slave. "I wouldn't have wished to have suffered his fate."

The Book of the Magnakai // 41 He gave an artificial laugh. Haakon looked up at him. "Oh, no, Kimah," he said thickly. "You won't die as he has done. You have failed me in too many ways. I have something far worse in mind for you." His Imperial Majesty the Zakhan Kimah stared into those hellish eyes and felt his soul being sucked away from him. # Time dragged on. It seemed to Lone Wolf as if it would be forever before the protective curtain of darkness would fall around him. But at least the Kraan seemed to be tiring because, although they managed to keep up with the exhausted itikar, they seemed to be incapable of gaining any ground. The only trouble was that they were still close enough to observe him by moonlight, so that his plan of losing himself in the darkness seemed doomed – unless he could retain his advantage, and the bird its strength, until they reached the gloomy Dahir Mountains, among whose passes and cols he might succeed in shaking them off. But he didn't think that was going to be possible. The itikar's great heart was waning, and once more its wingbeat was becoming irregular. Perhaps the Kraan and their Drakkarim or Vordak riders were merely toying with Lone Wolf, enjoying the sense of anticipation as they awaited the inevitable. He prayed to Ishir as he tried to urge the bird on to new heights of endeavour. He could think of little more constructive to do. There was a gap in the clouds and the Moon appeared, as if Ishir were answering his call. The Goddess was present only in her crescent form, as a narrow half-arc of light that seemed to be reclining on a couch formed by the grey sky. It was as if she were showing her presence to him without revealing her full face, whose bright white light would in the circumstances have been his enemy rather than his friend. He sent her a prayer of thanksgiving. She had reassured him. For the first time in a long while he allowed the thought to creep into his mind that perhaps he would live. Live to discover the Tomb of the Majhan and perhaps, within, the Book of the Magnakai . . . The cacklings of the Kraan brought him back from his dreams. Or had they? He blinked his eyes, incredulous. Had Ishir sent him a miracle? Sailing towards him from out of a bank of clouds came a sailing ship, built rather like a clipper, with a sharp prow and a streamlined hull, as if for rapid cutting through choppy waters. There, though, the resemblance ended. As well as the main cabin

The Book of the Magnakai // 42 mounted on the hull there was another, secondary one built at a higher level on an extension to the rear. The flying ship's twin sails were triangular, stretching back from the prow on either side of the mast, atop which fluttered a blue pennant decorated with silver stars. Lone Wolf found that he'd been holding his breath. When he saw the pennant he let out a yell of delight. Ishir had surely answered his entreaties. The design of the flag could surely mean only that the vessel belonged to Sommerlund's Brotherhood of the Crystal Star, steadfast allies through the ages of the Order of the Kai. Then he curbed his elation. Could this be a trick of the Nadziranim? Could the Dark magicians have conjured up a chimera to deceive him? Could they be tampering with his senses? But no. Towards the prow of the vessel there was a fortified platform, raised several feet above the deck, and standing there, waving and shouting urgently at him, was Banedon. Banedon! How had he come to be here? It was then that he noticed that his hands, holding the reins in front of him, were being spotted by fresh flecks of blood. He leaned forward anxiously, and saw that the itikar was very close to death. Its orange-and-black eyes were beginning to glaze over, and two rippling rivers of blood were crawling back along the sides of its head from the corners of its mouth. Through the medium of the medallion, Lone Wolf could sense the agony that the beast was forcing itself to endure each time it beat its mighty wings, and also the mute obedience with which it did endure that agony. Its loyalty to him was as great as if he had been its master all of its life. He glanced at the medallion. Then, on impulse, he sent through it a message of love and gratitude to the itikar. He was rewarded by a momentary quickening of the beast's wingbeat – but this time the effort was at last too much for it. The itikar let out a pitiful cawing howl, and he felt the muscles of its body go limp between his knees. Its wings gave one last feeble downbeat, and its head fell limply to one side. Its body began to tilt forward, and Lone Wolf found himself thrown forward into empty air. And then he was falling. The ground seemed to be rushing towards him, as if eager to gather him to its fatal embrace. Then his eyes no longer saw anything very clearly. He was aware of a multitude of jumbled shapes and impressions – the shrieks and chucklings of the Kraan and their riders, Banedon's voice and some others he couldn't identify shouting at him, the billowing triangular sails of the flying ship, the opalescent sprawl of the saltflats of Lake Inrahim, the boulderous masses of the silver-tinged clouds, the distant horizon and, over all, the crescent of Ishir benignly and silently watching

The Book of the Magnakai // 43 the scene. And there were memories too – of Storm Hawk, his mentor, and of Viveka and D'Val and Petra and Ulnar and most of all of Qinefer and once again it was Qinefer's face that came to dominate everything so that all the rest of the kaleidoscope of images and sounds was muffled away until he was looking directly into her eyes but these were not the eyes he had loved in the morning light, they were the ones he'd seen in her face in that hall back in the Imperial Palace of the Zakhan in Barrakeesh, and he wasn't really falling towards the ground he was falling into the depths of those alien eyes . . . # The impact forced the breath out of him in a hoarse, half-strangled scream. He was in pain all over: it seemed as if every bone in his body must be broken. He was surrounded by darkness. The pressure of the ground against his body was so great that it seemed as if it were positively pushing up against him. And the ground itself was sticky with his own blood. He lost consciousness for a few seconds. When he returned to reality his mind started to question things. Surely it was impossible for him to have survived the fall? He could only guess the height at which the itikar had been flying, but it must have been several thousand feet. Unless Ishir had intervened with a miracle, or unless his Kai gestalt possessed marvellous powers which it had never before revealed to him . . . The stickiness he felt against his face and hands wasn't blood, after all. He felt thin ropes adhering to his skin, as if he had become enmeshed in the web of some gigantic spider. He pushed angrily against the strands, and heard a guffaw from above him. Pulling his face clear with some difficulty, he turned his head and looked upwards. He found himself staring straight into the bearded faces, not ten feet away, of three human-like grotesques. One had a sharp quill permanently pierced through a flap of skin on his forehead; the other two seemed to be subservient to him. He could see the arms and shoulders of their brightly coloured jerkins as they hauled eagerly on the net with which they had succeeded in fishing him from the sky. They were chuckling and grunting as they worked, but Lone Wolf could tell from their faces that the situation was grim. The dragged him aboard what proved to be, not the main body of the ship itself, but an outrigger that ran the full length of the hull. "Welcome to the Skyrider," said the one with the feather through his skin. "No time for yakking now." He hardly needed to gesture. The night sky was filled with the cries of the Kraan and their hideous riders. In the thin light from the crescent Moon and its reflections from the edges of the

The Book of the Magnakai // 44 clouds Lone Wolf could see that the flying ship was the focus of a ferocious attack. The deceptively flimsy forms of the Kraan were fleetingly delineated as they fluttered hither and thither around the craft, uttering their shrill vindictive screeches. Closer to hand, over the shoulders of the three dwarfs who had netted him from thin air, he could see . . . "Out of my way!" shouted Lone Wolf, pushing them apart so that he could run between them, all traces of fatigue fleeing from his body, his hand snaking to the hilt of the Sommerswerd. One of the Drakkar riders had succeeded in leaping aboard the outrigger and was struggling with a crewman. The dwarf was putting up a brave fight, but his short, stubby sword was obviously no match for the longer blade and the longer arms of the Darklords' minion. Inch by inch the dwarf was being pushed backwards towards the edge of the outrigger and the staggering drop beyond it. Out of the corner of his eye, Lone Wolf could see that another Drakkar was dropping onto the flying craft – this time towards the fortified platform where Banedon had been standing. Others were waiting their chance astride the swooping and circling Kraan. A lucky slash from the dwarf's sword, and the Drakkar's weapon went spinning off into the night. But the armoured warrior was totally unconcerned. With one great mailed fist he reached out and grabbed the little man's muscular sword-wrist and began slowly to twist it. Even as he charged along the outrigger Lone Wolf could hear the grunts of the dwarf as he tried to resist the inexorable torsion, his face a tableau of pain. With his other hand the Drakkar grabbed the dwarf by the throat and lifted him three feet clear of the deck, tightening his fingers sadistically into the little man's flesh. Lone Wolf shouted furiously, wordlessly challenging the Drakkar to combat. His red cloak swirling in the air, the warrior looked contemptuously back over his shoulder and discarded the dwarf into the void as if he were simply disposing of some unwanted ballast. The callousness of the act enraged Lone Wolf even further, and he roared as he drew the Sommerswerd with a slick swish from its sheath, scattering the last droplets of the Vordak's ichor across the wooden planking of the outrigger. The Drakkar made a funny little snickering noise which changed to a metallic wail as he saw the golden pulsation of the Sommerswerd's gleaming blade. He pulled a morningstar from his belt, and twitched the haft so that the bladed ball swung ponderously backwards and forwards at the end of its chain. Then he drew it back over his shoulder, ready to bring it whistling round into Lone Wolf's body.

The Book of the Magnakai // 45 Lone Wolf paused. He knew that the ball was heavy enough and the barbed blades on it sharp enough to rip him to shreds if the Drakkar should get in with a lucky strike. But then the bloodlust was in him, the Sommerswerd seeming to hum in his grasp. As the morningstar swung around – aimed too high, towards his face rather than his torso, which would have been a much surer target – he leaned back with all the ease and grace of the beast that had given him its name, feeling his tongue begin to protrude between his lips and his upper canines seeming to extend over the lower ones. The snarl that he gave was more animal than human as he put his left hand over his right on the hilt of the Sommerswerd and brought the sword down with all of his strength on the very crest of the Drakkar's helmet. The shock ran all the way up his arms, startling some of the battle frenzy from him. He looked around a little blearily, expecting to find that he'd cloven the Drakkar in half from head to groin. To his astonishment, the Drakkar was standing. But the warrior's precarious balance couldn't last for long. He collapsed to his knees, blood flowing freely from the sides of his death-mask. The helmet itself had been crushed inwards by the colossal blow to such an extent that his head must have been almost bifurcated. Yet still, somehow, he lived. Making a horrible, throttling, rasping noise, he was desperately trying to pluck the fragments of his mask from his eyes and the flesh of his face. His reward was a further gush of blood. "You scum," growled Lone Wolf. "You deserve a worse fate, but at least I can make sure you share the one to which you condemned that dwarf." He lashed out with his foot and kicked the Drakkar forcefully on the side of the splintered mask. The armoured warrior lurched convulsively backwards, grappling blindly at the empty air for anything to clutch on to, then with a harsh shriek of malevolent despair collapsed over the edge of the outrigger. Lone Wolf watched the red-cloaked form become rapidly smaller as it receded towards the ground, and for once he felt a joy in killing another living being. "Have you finished?" said a small voice, seemingly from directly beneath him. Startled, Lone Wolf peered over the side of the outrigger. Tangled hazardously in the netting beneath the outrigger boards was the dwarf he had assumed that the Drakkar had thrown to his doom. Kneeling down, Lone Wolf grabbed the little man by the leg and hauled him up to the relative security of the outrigger. There the dwarf sat looking dazed, seeming unable to decide whether to massage his bruised neck or nurse his damaged wrist. "Thanks to ye, sir," he said, speaking with some difficulty, "but I think as my friends might some helping like too, now." Lone Wolf spun round.

The Book of the Magnakai // 46 He remembered seeing that Drakkar dropping towards the fortified platform on the main hull. The platform seemed innocuously still now, but his Kai senses screamed at him that there was something dreadfully wrong there. He leapt the gap between the outrigger and the hull before he had time to think of what the consequences would have been had he fallen short. He landed with a slight stagger but swiftly regained his balance. Ducking beneath the boom, he tripped and stumbled over scattered ropes and other mariners' trappings, many of them scaled down to half the size one would normally expect, and finally clambered up onto the platform. At its far end was a curious radiant sphere, but he had no eyes for it. "Banedon!" shouted Lone Wolf in despair. The magician was on the deck. Over him stood a Drakkar. The warrior was crowing in loud triumph. Banedon's left arm had been skewered to the boards by a long spear, so that he was unable to do much more than try to kick out purposelessly at the Drakkar's armoured legs and groin. The whole of the left side of his starred blue robe was dyed deeply with blood from his wound, which was being torn further open by his futile efforts to harm the Drakkar. In his right hand he held a staff, with which he seemed to be trying to fend off the blows that the Drakkar must surely soon begin to rain upon him. At Lone Wolf's shout the Drakkar turned, ignoring the struggling form of Banedon at his feet. The warrior's warp-bladed scimitar was in his hand so swiftly that it was hard to believe that he had had to draw it from his belt. His death-mask appeared to display an expression of sardonic satisfaction as he looked at the figure of Lone Wolf standing at the edge of the platform, his legs apart, the tip of the Sommerswerd resting on the deck between them. Both warriors were breathing loudly. The Drakkar made a gesture of loathing, moving his head with a jerk as if he were spitting at Lone Wolf. This was the real prey he had been sent in search of, this big blond youth with the unruly beard and the sword of gold. The slight magician had been only an entree before the main course. The red lightning zigzags along the sides of the Drakkar's mask indicated that he was one of the elite among the dark warriors. The Drakkar was the first to move. He darted to his right and then, as Lone Wolf turned in that direction, almost immediately to his left. He struck out with a back-handed blow of his scimitar and, if Lone Wolf hadn't seen just in time what was happening, must certainly have struck flesh. Instead the honed edge of the weapon cut across the front of Lone Wolf's tunic and cape, so that the tatters of cloth impeded the young Kai's hands. Lone Wolf could feel the bloodlust surging through his body once more. The night sky around him appeared to redden

The Book of the Magnakai // 47 and blur, so that all he could see was the swiftly moving figure of the warrior of Evil and the fallen form of Banedon. Once again the Sommerswerd seemed to be humming all along its length, as if there were a berserker song locked up inside the blade, begging to be set free. Lone Wolf forgot all the pain of the bruises and cuts he'd received over the past few days: there was no room left in his mind for anything except the lust for bloody vengeance against this symbol of all the Evil that infested Magnamund. A low growl came from the back of his throat as he swung with the Sommerswerd. The Drakkar was too nimble for him. The red-robed warrior gave a guttural snort as he twisted his curved sword around so that the blade of the Sommerswerd glanced off it harmlessly. The sound of metal upon metal was like the angry screech of a fast-moving lathe against hard stone. The impetus of the failed blow was such that Lone Wolf lost his footing – but so, fortunately, did the Drakkar officer, for Banedon had at last managed to intrude one of his legs between those of the Drakkar. Lone Wolf was first to regain control, and he struggled to take advantage of it. He brought the Sommerswerd around behind him in an almost balletic sweep and then up and over his head to come down with dazzling rapidity on the Drakar's shoulder . . . Where the Drakkar's shoulder should have been. The blade of the Sommerswerd embedded itself in the wood of the platform's parapet. The warrior was able to move with an astonishing agility for a man clad in full armour. He had taken a single quick step to the side. Luckily, in so doing he wrong-handed himself for another profitable blow at Lone Wolf, and had to satisfy himself with a rather weak punch of his fist into Lone Wolf's side. Weak it might have been, but the mailed fist still struck with bruising force, and for a moment Lone Wolf felt his gorge rise. Then he was totally under the spell of the bloodlust once more. Without seeming to have to expend any effort at all, he tugged the Sommerswerd from the wood while at the same time shoving the Drakkar firmly in the chest. Armour or no armour, a push is still as effective. The Drakkar staggered a little, but almost at once he had regained his equilibrium – if anything now rather better placed than before because he had some extra room to allow him to bring his scimitar back into play. Lone Wolf realized his mistake almost too late. The scimitar missed the bridge of his nose by inches at most. At the end of the weapon's arc the Drakkar turned with practised ease in his hand so as to be able to bring it back, almost in the same motion, in a wild slice at Lone Wolf's throat. But this time Lone Wolf was ready for the move. With both hands on its hilt, he swung the Sommerswerd exactly counter to the motion of the scimitar, so that the two blades clashed together with numbing force. Lone Wolf was prepared for the impact but the Drakkar evidently wasn't, for the robed warrior reeled, almost

The Book of the Magnakai // 48 dropping his weapon, and a gasping shout of startled anguish came from behind the grotesquely painted mask. Immediately Lone Wolf prepared to take advantage of his foe's distress, but once again he had underestimated the resilience of this Drakkar officer. Even though the man's arm must be feeling like putty, he was still handling his scimitar with almost the same speed and skill as before. Realizing Lone Wolf's overconfidence, he feinted a step backwards and thrust upwards with the sharp point of the curved sword, hoping to catch Lone Wolf under the jaw and impale his brain from beneath. The manoeuvre would have succeeded had one of Banedon's kicking feet not once again found a target. This time it was in fact Lone Wolf's shin; the unexpected pain threw his footing out of kilter, and his slight sideways lurch was just enough to ensure that the scimitar went wide of its mark. Sweat from his exertions was now pouring down Lone Wolf's forehead, and the salt from his eyebrows was getting into his eyes and making them sting agonizingly. He blinked furiously, the pain penetrating even the bloodlust, and took a step backwards. Now, rather than swing the Sommerswerd, he stabbed abruptly forwards with it, aiming the skewer the Drakkar through the abdomen. The move was a near-instinctive one, drilled into him years ago by Storm Hawk, his tutor at the Kai Monastery. Too late he remembered the Drakkar's body-armour. The blow did not penetrate, but once again the Drakkar was knocked off-balance by the impact. Lone Wolf himself almost lost his grip on the Sommerswerd, and his left hand began to move towards the dagger at his belt, preparing to use it in a last-ditch attempt to save his life. But then it was as if the Drakkar had been seized by some unseen giant hand. His body froze in position, off-balance as it was. The scimitar dropped from his nerveless fingers to crash on the wooden deck. Starting softly at first but then building up into an ear-shattering crescendo, the warrior screamed, and his mailed gloves began to paw uselessly at the air. Blood spurted from all the apertures of his mask and from the armoured joints at his wrists and ankles; bile and other intestinal fluids oozed from the junction at his waist. Lone Wolf watched in dumb amazement. It was as if some titanic force were slowly crushing the Drakkar to death inside his armour. He could hear the man's ribs crackling as they were pulverized inwards. A great gust of fetid air came from the death-mask as the Drakkar's lungs were crushed out of existence. When he saw what was beginning to leak from the eye-holes of the death-mask Lone Wolf turned away, his stomach in turmoil, unable to watch any longer.

The Book of the Magnakai // 49 Behind him he heard the armoured warrior clatter to the ground. He could also hear, through the background panoply of the Kraan's unearthly screeches and cacklings, the sound of Banedon weeping as if in the furthest throes of misery. Lone Wolf turned, averting his gaze from the puddled wreckage of what had once been a Drakkarim. At once he saw that the agony Banedon was suffering was not physical but mental and emotional. He took the few steps necessary to bring him to the young magician's side, and knelt down beside him. With a sharp yank he pulled the spear free from the deck and from Banedon's arm; he was rewarded by a renewed rush of blood, which he hastily staunched using strips of cloth that he unceremoniously tore from Banedon's own Crystal Star robe. Once had tied his improvised bandage together as well as he was able, he looked earnestly into Banedon's face. Banedon was weeping profusely and unashamedly. "I was too slow to shield myself," he was saying thickly. "I could have saved all this from happening if I'd only had the sense to think of looking upwards when that . . . that thing was dropping down on top of me." He looked with renewed remorse at the tangle of armoured limbs. "And it hurts so much to use left-handed magic to take life – even the life of scum like that." Lone Wolf was pulling him to his feet. With Kraan and Drakkar still attacking the flying ship, he couldn't leave Banedon lying here exposed to the enemy forces. He must try to find somewhere that the magician would be protected – if not in fact, then at least from sight. Once erect, Banedon weakly shook off Lone Wolf's grasp. "We've got to get away from here," he said, his voice still rough with emotion. He waved with his good arm in the general direction of the cloud of screaming spawn surrounding the Skyrider. "If we don't then, sooner or later, they'll drag us from the sky." "Or kill us," said Lone Wolf tersely. "Not all of us," he heard Banedon mutter, as if to himself. "The dwarfs'd probably be all right . . ." With Lone Wolf's support, Banedon staggered towards the front of the platform, where the crystalline sphere was mounted. Close up, Lone Wolf could see that it was supported – impossibly, it seemed – by nothing more than a slim silver rod. Embedded in its smooth surface were thousands of faceted shards of gleaming metal. At once Lone Wolf guessed that this must be the flying ship's helm; as to how it functioned, he had no notion. Staggering, obviously holding himself upright by sheer effort of will, Banedon laid a hand upon this sphere and prepared to take control of his ship.

The Book of the Magnakai // 50 As he did so the air was filled with an ear-splitting explosion. Lone Wolf reeled backwards, his hands to his head.

The Book of the Magnakai // 51 CHAPTER THREE The Clipper of the Clouds "What in the name of the almighty Ishir was that?" Lone Wolf yelled. To his astonishment, Banedon turned and offered him a weak smile. "I told you the dwarfs'd probably be able to look out for themselves," he said, his quiet voice somehow cutting through the cacophony. "They're from Bor, you know. Inventive fellows, the people of Bor." Lone Wolf still stared at him. All he knew about Bor was that it was notorious for brewing an ale so potent that it was banned in many parts of Magnamund. He let the matter rest for the moment. The rear cabin was briefly engulfed in a huge cloud of blue smoke which rapidly dispersed in the wind. As it did so, Lone Wolf could see a screaming Kraan falling ungainly from the sky, one of its tented wings reduced to a tangle of shattered bones and leathery flesh. Its Drakkar rider was clinging to its back, as if somehow there might be a chance that the creature could recover its ability to fly. Entwined, the pair fell to their nemesis. There were more of the thunderous explosions, and the Skyrider rocked and pitched from the reactions. Banedon just smiled benignly at the look of utter incredulity on Lone Wolf's face. The aerial battle was definitely turning in favour of the flying ship and her crew. Each eruption of sound was followed almost immediately by a scream of anguish – sometimes several screams – as the Darklands spawn were brought from the sky. There was a Drakkar with his head half blown away, falling from his mount in a mist of blood, brains and skull splinters. A Kraan contorted its body to look uncomprehendingly at the hole in its stomach from which ichorous fluids suddenly jetted, oblivious of the fact that in so doing it was shucking its rider from its back. Another Kraan was taken full in its bony serrated bill, which was blasted backwards to mash the creature's brain. A Drakkar waving a mace and shrieking defiance dropped from his mount towards the deck; by the time he landed he was no longer recognizable as an armoured human being. The foot of a Kraan was blasted off; no doubt crazed by the pain, the beast fell away from them, plucking frenziedly at the ichorous stump with its viciously sharp beak . . . Lone Wolf, standing beside Banedon amidst the clouds of pungent smoke, was impressed. If the people of Bor possessed magic of this power, then surely they ought to be brought to the defence of Sommerlund. The carnage did not continue long. After only a few more minutes the remaining Kraan, terrified and demoralized by the noise, peeled away, ignoring the furious exhortations of their riders

The Book of the Magnakai // 52 that they should continue what was now obviously a doomed assault: for once the flying spawn showed more intelligence than their human masters. Soon the Skyrider was sailing tranquilly through the skies under the scudding clouds, seemingly blessed by the cool moonshine. From the rear cabin emerged one of the dwarfs who had hauled Lone Wolf aboard earlier, the one with the quill stuck through his forehead. His bearded face was covered with both smoke and a grin. In his jerkined arms he was carrying a long iron tube which seemed, from the way that he was handling it so gingerly, to be extremely hot. From one end of the tube drifted wisps of the same bluish smoke that had until so recently shrouded the Skyrider. "What kind of magic is this, Banedon?" said Lone Wolf awedly as several further dwarfs appeared. "It's not magic," said the magician, concentrating on controlling the deft way the fingers of his good hand ran over the surface of the crystalline globe. "I told you, the people of Bor are very clever artificers. I've had reason to thank their inventiveness several times since I was given the Skyrider." "But his magic staff . . ." began Lone Wolf, pointing towards the approaching dwarf and the metal tube he was carrying. "It's not magic, I tell you," said Banedon, beginning to grin. "It's what the dwarfs like to call a `device'. In the mountains of their country the people have discovered a hallowed mixture of ores which, when ignited in a confined space, can give rise to violent eruptions of raw energy such as those you have witnessed. They have devised a way of harnessing this dread power in order to propel projectiles through the air with killing speed and force." Lone Wolf thought silently that indeed there were many marvels in Magnamund. "Quan," said the dwarf, extending a small, wrinkled hand to Lone Wolf, who took it with courtesy yet with the sort of reluctance one might experience on encountering an alien but amicable being. "I'm the skipper of this here dreadnought, saving when the Guv's here himself, o' course." He gestured with his head towards Banedon. "Then I'm just head swab. The rest of 'em's just bottom swabs, you see, whether the Guv's here or not." The little man stank of something that Lone Wolf vaguely identified as brimstone. No, there was something of charcoal in the smell as well – and perhaps a little saltpetre. Quan looked at the still seeping corpse of the Drakkar whom Banedon had crushed to death. "Proper mess you made of that one, Guv," he said without any apparent revulsion, kicking the carcase's breastplate ruminatively. "Have to put someone on double swabbin' duties to get the deck clean, we will." He turned.

The Book of the Magnakai // 53 "Here! Tappen!" he bellowed. "Bring a mop and a bucket! Got some mess up here for ye!" One of the dwarfs working on the deck below looked up, shrugged, and then turned away obediently to find the necessary implements. Banedon was steering the craft about, banking steeply until the Skyrider was facing the darkening peaks of the southern mountains and the distinct V-shaped cleft of the Dahir Pass. Lone Wolf looked at him concernedly. So far the young magician was bearing up well, but his face was pale and perspiring. The pain and the shock of his wound must be conspiring to drain him of energy. The makeshift bandage that Lone Wolf constructed during the heat of battle would have to be changed and the wound itself treated. Lone Wolf was just moving to suggest this when there was a yell of distress from one of the dwarfs who were clearing up the debris and the carcases that had been left littering the Skyrider's deck. Lone Wolf spun around to look over the platform's low parapet. It was clear enough what had happened. While the dwarfs had been methodically dragging the corpses of the Kraan and Drakkarim to the side of the Skyrider and tossing them over, they must have come across one of them who was merely shamming death. The Drakkar was standing firmly amidships now, his legs apart, two dwarfs clutching their heads and moaning behind him. In the Drakkar's hand was a throwing-axe, its finely honed twin blades gleaming evilly in the lambent moonlight. Never before had Lone Wolf thought that he might see vileness in the colour of silver. The Drakkar was screaming like a fiend from behind his scarifying death-mask. His armour and his cloak were covered in the dark stains of blood – presumably his own – as well as the greenish blotches of his dead mount's ichor. It was all too clear that the focus of his berserk attention was Lone Wolf himself – the dwarfs he simply ignored. As one of them moved towards him aggressively he simply pushed the little man away again contemptuously with his foot. Having used the axe to keep the dwarfs back from any further attempts at interference, the Drakkar drew his axe back, ready to hurl it directly at Lone Wolf's exposed chest. Lone Wolf found himself paralyzed like a rabbit under the stare of a predator. The shock of the sudden discovery that, after all, they still hadn't left all of their foes behind, coupled with his exhaustion and his hunger, had lowered his mental defences to the point where he simply didn't know what to do – and so did nothing. The cold and dusty voice of his Kai gestalt came into his mind, speaking urgently for once.

The Book of the Magnakai // 54 Dive, Lone Wolf! it said forcefully. Dive! Now! To your right! Startled out of his immobility, Lone Wolf did as he was told, throwing himself almost flat to clutch the side of the platform. He was only just in time. Spinning rapidly end-over-end the axe shot through the place where his body had been only an instant before. It continued in its trajectory to speed over Banedon's shoulder, where the magician still stood at the helm, narrowly missing his ear and causing him to yelp with astonishment. Lone Wolf regained his feet with difficulty and groped for the pommel of the Sommerswerd at his waist. He needn't have troubled himself. Once again there was one of the awesome explosions of the dwarfish weapons. The Drakkar's black armoured breastplate was abruptly a mess of metal and blood. For a moment the warrior looked down at the shambles of his chest, and then he collapsed. At once a couple of the dwarfs ambled over matter-of-factly and grabbed the Drakkar's legs. Moments later the remains of the warrior were just another item of discarded debris littering the desert far below them. Quan looked at Lone Wolf and grinned again. "The only good Drakkar's a . . ." he began. There was an ominous growl of thunder across the darkling desert, seemingly coming from the distant city of Barrakeesh. Lone Wolf had the feeling that, somehow, the city itself was cursing the fact that he had yet again escaped with his life. "Looks like there's a storm coming up," said Banedon more prosaically at his elbow. "I hope Jenara's all right," he added inconsequentially, and Lone Wolf looked at him sharply, wondering what he was talking about. The magician's ashen face and the weakness of his voice reminded him that he had been going to tend Banedon's arm wound. And, now that he looked more closely, he could see that the improvised bandage was soaked with fresh blood. "You shouldn't be on your feet," he said urgently. "I'll be all right," said Banedon frailly, but it was all too obvious that he wouldn't. His eyes were glazed and he was rocking on his feet. "Well, come over here and at least sit down," said Lone Wolf, guiding Banedon over to a place near the helm where he could lean his back up against the parapet. "That's right, Guv," Quan added in the background. "Take it easy, that's what I say." Out of the corner of his eye Lone Wolf noticed that the crystalline sphere was moving slowly and controlledly, guiding the Skyrider on its course. He wondered if in some way the magician might still be governing the orb with his mind, but he put all such considerations aside as he knelt to examine the wound.

The Book of the Magnakai // 55 The sodden bandage was a mess. Lone Wolf's knots had been hasty, and some of them were coming adrift, so that wet tatters of dripping cloth were hanging loose. Yet he didn't want to unpick the dressing for fear of causing Banedon yet further loss of blood. "Hold still now," he said. He touched one hand to the hilt of the Sommerswerd, drawing upon its soul-stuff and allowing it to meld with his own. Once he felt that the blending was complete, he put his other hand around Banedon's thin arm, just above the bandage, and let the healing influence of the mixed soul-stuff flow down his own arm, through his hand and into Banedon's flesh. As if they were areas of dim light in a darkened room, he could sense the sundered pieces of bone and the ripped areas of muscle, and he watched as the soul-stuff permeated Banedon's tissues until it engulfed these regions, lapping around them, bathing them in its healing properties, warming them with its own soft, golden warmth. Lone Wolf could detect the dim lights coalescing, fitting together in the configurations that seemed most natural to them, settling in place as if with a sigh of satisfaction that at last they were reunited. The filaments of light that were the fibres of Banedon's muscles reached out tentatively towards each other at first but then with more confidence until, seeming to pulse radiantly with joy, they joined together to make firm bonds. And then the deed was done. Sweating from the effort, Lone Wolf leaned back, releasing Banedon's arm. While he had been concentrating, the dwarfs had lit torches around the deck of the Skyrider, and in their fitful light he was able to see that some colour was returning to Banedon's face. The magician smiled wanly at him as he fastidiously untied the knots in the soaking cloth and revealed the torn flesh. Although the healing abilities of Lone Wolf's soul-stuff, combined with that of the Sommerswerd, had been able to save the bones and muscles of the limb, they had as yet to tackle the open wound. Feeling faint from his mental exertions, Lone Wolf prepared himself to heal the torn flesh. Once again he reached out for Banedon's arm, but suddenly there was a none too gentle rap on his shoulder. "Shove over there, Guv," said Quan brusquely. "You've done the tricksy bit. Now it's up to Nolrim here to show us as he's not just a freeloader but can actually saw a bone as well as the next dwarf." At first Lone Wolf was dubious, but then he saw the businesslike way in which the new arrival flicked open the red velvet satchel strapped to his chest and, whistling absent-mindedly, remove from it a glass vial containing some clear liquid as well as a clean linen bandage. The dwarf's hands moved speedily and surely as he dressed the gash in Banedon's arm, and at last Lone Wolf was able to give way to his fatigue and relax against the parapet.

The Book of the Magnakai // 56 "We've a lot of explaining to do to each other, you and I, Banedon," he said as the dwarf continued his painstaking work. "Where this ship came from." He waved around him at the sails and rigging of the Skyrider. "How it was that you just happened to come by at precisely the right moment in order to be able to save me from the Kraan. Who the dwarfs are. That sort of thing." Banedon looked at him in silence. At a movement of Nolrim's fingers he winced. "Sorry, Guv," muttered the dwarf. "Yes, I know," continued Lone Wolf as if Banedon had spoken – which in a way he had: his eyes had been expressive enough. "You're tired at the moment, so I won't trouble you with explanations of all that right now. Instead, let me tell you of how I came to be here . . ." Over the next twenty minutes or so Lone Wolf related how he had been brought to Vassagonia by Allani in order to sign a treaty between that nation and Sommerlund; how on arrival they'd discovered that the old Zakhan, Moudalla, had died to be succeeded by Kimah; of the treachery of the Sharnazim and of his helter-skelter flight first through the sewers and then through the Imperial Palace; and finally of his escape astride the itikar. Banedon knew much of this already, and showed only moderate interest in Lone Wolf's adventures and vicissitudes. On hearing of the conversation between Haakon and Kimah in which the Book of the Magnakai had been discussed, however, he sat bolt upright, silencing the chattering disapproval of Nolrim with an uncharacteristic glare. "The Book of the Magnakai!" exclaimed Banedon. "You mean it really still exists? I thought it had been destroyed centuries ago!" "At the Kai Monastery we were told of it, and that it had vanished, but our tutors stressed to us that there had never been any tales of its destruction," said Lone Wolf. "We all believed that the day might come when it would be rediscovered, and that the lore of Sun Eagle would once again become available to the Order of the Kai so that Sommerlund – and all of Magnamund – might be saved. What none of us expected, of course, was that the Darklords might discover its whereabouts first." Banedon whistled reflectively, gazing up at the pennant atop the Skyrider's mast. "It seems that once again the future of Sommerlund lies in our hands, Lone Wolf," he said gently. "You won't have a hand unless you stop still, Guv," said Nolrim sternly. Banedon ignored the dwarf's admonition and smiled at Lone Wolf. "It's funny, you know," he said, "but hearing that the Book of the Magnakai still exists is – well, it's as if it had just been written and given to the world for the first time." Then his expression grew graver.

The Book of the Magnakai // 57 "We must stop Haakon from destroying it. If we let him do that it would be like a boot trampling on the flower of this world." "The question is: how?" said Lone Wolf. "It's an easy enough thing to say, Banedon, but putting it into practice is going to be a lot more difficult. For a start, we don't even know where this place – the Tomb of the Majhan – is." "I've heard tell of it," said Banedon, his eyes still narrowed in speculation. Once again his speech was interrupted by a little moué of pain as Nolrim continued with the work of cleaning the wound. "And what I've heard hasn't exactly been cheery stuff. Some of the nomads of the Dry Main have told me about it when they've brought their camels to water at our oasis. From the stories they've recounted to me, it's a terrible place – a place of horror and death. Of course, you've got to take into account the fact that travellers will always embellish their tales. I'm sure you've embroidered a few of your adventures in the telling Lone Wolf" – Lone Wolf glared at him, but said nothing to interrupt him – "and all the more so might these nomads. Even taking account of that, the Tomb of the Majhan sounds to be gloomy at best, lethally dangerous otherwise." "Yes," said Lone Wolf, leaning forward and speaking urgently, despite the fact that he was trying to restrain himself in view of the magician's condition, "but where is the place?" "I barely know," said Banedon, and the meekness of his response was a rebuke to Lone Wolf's impetuousness. "According to all accounts it lies somewhere to the south of the Dahir Mountains beyond a little-used oasis called Bal-loftan. More than that I can't tell you right now. The Majhan hid their tombs well, and the shifting over them of the desert sands has hidden them even better. The Dry Main has taken many things into its pocket and never revealed them again." "You speak of the Majhan as if there were more than one of them – him," said Lone Wolf, eyebrows raised. He accepted gratefully when one of the dwarfs brought him a plateful of food. He put it between his knees and began to eat eagerly with the wooden spoon he'd been given. The food was a hash of what appeared to be boiled lentils, and was somewhat lukewarm, but he was ravenous. Banedon, with a weak wave, declined sustenance. In between "I thought he was a historical personage, some kind of a prophet sacred to the Vassagonians." "All is one and one is several," said Banedon tiredly as Nolrim tied the final neat knot and stepped back to smack his lips in satisfaction at his handiwork. "Surely they told you that back during your time at the Kai Monastery, Lone Wolf? In historical fact, the Majhan was probably a small nomadic tribe that gained considerable status in Vassagonia through their prophetic ability and their wisdom. In religious fact – which is just as much reality, in a sense, as its more strictly historical counterpart – the Majhan was a single person, a man of such sagacity and mystical prowess

The Book of the Magnakai // 58 that he can be regarded as bestriding the whole of early Vassagonian history. Or perhaps the tribal explanation is all wrong, and the Majhan was really a succession of sages. Don't ask me what the truth of the matter is: I don't know, and to be honest with you I don't think it's really that important." Once again that wan smile, but the gleam of vitality was returning steadily to Banedon's eyes. Lone Wolf suspected that the magician was mocking him, and he wasn't sure he was enjoying the experience. "But `the Dry Main to the south of the Dahir Mountains' is a vast area," he said. "We can't possibly hope to search it all." "There may be somebody who can lead us there," said Banedon reflectively, sucking in his cheeks and nodding his thanks to an apprehensive Nolrim, who grinned gratefully before scuttling away to leave the two of them alone. "Who?" "The nomads often mentioned a man called Tipasa Edarouk – that means `Tipasa the Wanderer'. It's said that he's the only man who's ever ventured inside the Tomb of the Majhan and lived to tell the tale. We're already heading towards the Dahir Pass, and should be beyond the mountains by the morrow. Then we can start trying to find out more about where Tipasa himself might be found." Although he was still pale, Banedon seemed already to be much stronger, as if he were drawing upon his own reserves of second-level magic in order to supply his body with renewed energy. He waved Lone Wolf's offer of assistance in getting to his feet, and moved to take the helm. They were nearer now to the Dahir Mountains than Lone Wolf would have thought possible: in the moonlight he could see the snow-capped peaks scraping the clouds. Banedon decreased the Skyrider's altitude to no more than about a thousand feet, as he wanted to be able to make out the contours of the land below them in order to trace out the bends and zigzags of the treacherous pass. As his hands moved across the surface of the glowing, scintillating sphere his body began to relax, as if he were going into some kind of trance, becoming one with the sphere in the same way that Lone Wolf could become united with the Sommerswerd. His eyes slowly closed, and an almost invisible crackle of energy, like fine white lightning, was tracing an intricate pattern over his forehead and temples. What Lone Wolf didn't know was that Banedon was constructing inside his mind a configuration of magical energy and then allowing it to bud upon itself a millionfold until it created the necessary spell to guide the Skyrider exactly where he wished it to go. Yet Banedon was still perfectly capable of conversation. He told Lone Wolf of how he had been given the Skyrider by the magicians of Dessi, and he recounted a carefully expurgated version (one of the dwarfs might have overheard him) of the card

The Book of the Magnakai // 59 game in which he'd won its crew. He explained that it was only on very rare occasions that he journeyed aboard the Skyrider: most of the time he allowed the dwarfs to use it to ply their trade from village to village through the southern lands of Magnamund. It was by chance, or through the operation of some precognitive sense, that he had called it some three weeks ago to the oasis, where it had arrived that very evening. Then he moved on to more germane matters. He described how he had been able to save Lone Wolf from capture when first the Kai warrior had landed in the port of Barrakeesh. ("I thought it must be you!" exclaimed Lone Wolf.) He quickly recounted his adventures with Thog – as he had thought it to be – in the dungeons under the palace and of his encounter with the Nadziran and his duel with the Nadziran's right-handed magic. ("I hadn't realized there were any Nadziranim in Vassagonia," said Lone Wolf, looking worried.) He told Lone Wolf about Allani and his claims to the throne of Vassagonia, and about Jenara's efforts to further the aims of her lover. He explained how Qinefer had destroyed the Birthplace in Barrakeesh, and how in so doing she had also made herself more whole than she had ever been before, so that now she could read the patterns of the flux of events; and how she had conveyed something of this to Banedon himself so that, simply by relaxing and allowing himself to be guided by that flux, he'd arrived at the place above Lake Inrahim at just the right moment to save Lone Wolf from his death at the beaks of the Kraan. The one thing that he didn't tell Lone Wolf was that Qinefer had detected that the pattern of future flux lines was taking her away from him, Lone Wolf, and perhaps forever: that was something that Banedon felt Lone Wolf ought to work out for himself. He knew from Qinefer that she'd tried to explain to Lone Wolf that, if he made a conscious effort to change the direction of his own path through the maze of flux lines, then the two of them might journey the rest of the way through the pattern that led to the salvation of Sommerlund together, but that Lone Wolf had been too impatient to pay much heed to what she was telling him. If Lone Wolf were possessed of any powers of introspection at all, then sooner or later the memory of her words must come back to him, so that he would realize that Qinefer had already made her formal farewell to him. Banedon did not feel that it was up to him to intervene in a matter that was strictly the concern of Lone Wolf and Qinefer. Lone Wolf wasn't paying as much attention as he should have been to the later parts of Banedon's discourse. They were now within the confines of the Dahir Pass, and there were precipitous rock faces dizzyingly close to them on either side. Lone Wolf could see all too clearly, in the torchlight from the Skyrider, brutally barbed pinnacles of rock and sharp-edged crevices that seemed to reach out at them seeking to seize the craft and tear

The Book of the Magnakai // 60 away its sails. A couple of hundred feet below the main trail meandered; as far as he could see, the Skyrider was following the centre of its course precisely. Nevertheless, he looked up once again at those rocky walls and shuddered. A couple of hundred feet was as nothing to some of the altitudes he'd flown at today, but it was still a far enough distance to fall. Banedon fell silent. It was a few moments before Lone Wolf realized that all he could hear was the faintest sound of the crackling electricity playing across the magician's face. "Don't worry, Lone Wolf," said Nolrim, returning to the platform. "Now that the Guv's in charge, everything'll be OK, you mark my words it will. Why not come aft and join me and the lads in a bit of a belter, eh? It'll be morning afore we're through this 'ere pass." Lone Wolf reckoned he might as well accept the dwarf's invitation. In answer to his question Nolrim pointed over the side of the boat, waiting for him discreetly; then the dwarf led him to the cabin mounted behind the rear of the main hull. The interior of the cabin was brightly lit and redolent with the aromas of spiced meat and strong ale. It had been only a couple of hours since Lone Wolf had eaten, but that meal had been a sorry thing, and he could feel his mouth beginning to salivate. The noise was incredible: it was difficult for Lone Wolf to believe that it was being made by only six of the little men. He was pushed down onto a bench that was too small running alongside a table that was too small, and before he could even think to protest there was plunked down in front of him a plateful of food that most certainly wasn't too small. Some of the shouted conversation was in Sommlending but most of it was in the dwarfs' own tongue. It was easy enough for Lone Wolf to guess, however, that they were making boasts and counter-boasts about their prowess during the battle against the Kraan. He found himself grinning and enjoying himself hugely: soldiers were ever like this after victory in battle. Then a dour expression crossed his face. Except, of course, for those soldiers who never returned to join in the revelry. He'd known too many of them in his short lifetime. He demolished his food in a surprisingly short time, and the dwarfs, their squabbling over, in recognition of the fact that they had a guest began to behave with a little more decorum. He even accepted a tankard of their notorious ale – Bor-brew, as it was called – which he drank at first cautiously but then with true appreciation. It was a strange concoction, thick and creamy, with a taste rather like that of malted apples. After Lone Wolf had finished his drink and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, he saw that all the dwarfs were watching him suspiciously through the cloud of their tobacco smoke, as if at any moment he might explode. After a while, they seemed to relax, although they still appeared a little incredulous. Finally Quan stood and, raising

The Book of the Magnakai // 61 his own tankard on high, pronounced Lone Wolf truly "a man among dwarfs". And so the time passed convivially enough. The dwarfs formally introduced themselves to him. Aside from Quan and Nolrim, whom Lone Wolf already knew, there were four others: Tappen, who had swabbed away the wreckage of the crushed Drakkar, his great friend Phud, and two brothers called Lirkin and Mirkin. Lone Wolf gathered that each of these names had great tribal significance among the people of Bor, but he was unable to establish any pattern of clan allegiances, and eventually gave up. Eventually the Bor-brew and the exhaustion hit him simultaneously. He allowed one of the dwarfs – he thought it was Phud but he was beginning to get wearily muddled – to lead him off to a chamber in the hull where six bunks had been laid out in a neat line. Lone Wolf flopped down on the one the dwarf indicated and, without caring that his legs hung over the end of it, fell instantly into a dreamless sleep. # The innkeeper looked up at the sweating face in front of him and shuddered. He saw a broad visage with an expression of bovine stupidity firmly pasted across it; the amiable and slightly drunken grin only made matters worse. Or perhaps the worst thing was the swarm of flies that buzzed eagerly around the two curved horns, one broken, that protruded from the man's helmet. The innkeeper sighed. There was a public multiple garrotting in progress outside, and all the rest of his clients had drifted out into the street to enjoy the fun. Soon they would be back in here, thirstier than ever, but at the moment he was in no position to pick and choose whom he served. "What'll it be?" he said to the barbarian. "Nothing but the best – by the thunder of the Gods' own stomachs! – for Thog the Mighty!" said the big man, spreading one of his huge hands out on the bar in front of him. "A tankard of whatever amber fluid passes for ale in your rat-bitten establishment, my good man!" As the innkeeper concentrated on tapping a tankard of the weak but foaming brew from the big barrel he kept behind the bar he was thinking: Here's a rum one, all right. It's strange I haven't seen him around here before – he stands out a mile, so I'd have noticed him if he'd been in here. He must be a stranger to these parts. As he put down the frothing tankard on the bar and accepted payment he said, casually, "Come a long way?" "Aye, that I have," said the barbarian, a moustache of froth on his upper lip. "League after league I've trekked across the face of this world of ours, and all because I wished to sup your famed ale."

The Book of the Magnakai // 62 The innkeeper looked sceptical. If his ale were becoming famed, it must be because his wife wasn't putting enough water in it. He made a mental note to beat her that night for her doltishness. "Thog," the stranger was saying, reaching out a meaty fist in greeting. "Perhaps you've heard of me and my many mighty deeds?" "The name is not altogether unfamiliar," the innkeeper lied suavely. "Time was when vast swathes of Magnamund cringed in terror at the sound of even the first syllable of my name," said the stranger, quaffing messily. "It was a matter of `Thog the Mighty did this' and `Thog the Mighty did that'. They even said I'd opened up the Maakengorge with my bare hands. Those were the good old days, my friend. Now things have changed, men have softened, and wenches have discovered the meaning of the word `virginity'. No one has any respect any more for the titans of times past." Thog clanked as he settled down on a bench and the various weapons at his belt rearranged themselves around him; moments later the flies followed. The innkeeper looked at him with something akin to exasperation. Then the barbarian did something that astonished him. He looked the innkeeper directly in the eye, and suddenly there was a light of intelligence in his face. Then he said a single word: "Allani." The innkeeper looked around to make sure there was no one else in the room. "What do you mean by that?" he whispered urgently. "The name means something to you?" "Of course it does. He might have been Zakhan had he been here when old Moudalla died, but he was engaged in some venture across the sea. Now he's dead himself – him and all his family, may the Majhan welcome their souls." The innkeeper made a sign in the air as if to invoke the blessings of the spirits, but the barbarian's newly bright eyes read it, and the innkeeper saw them reading it. "D'you know where he is?" said the Vassagonian, his voice once more reverting to a whisper. "Yes. He's been seized by the Sharnazim. He's still alive while they try to decide what to do with him: it's hard for them to know how to kill a man twice. I believe that, with just a little bit of good fortune, I can release him from the dungeon where they have him, but I need somewhere safe for him to hide after that." Inside Thog's body Jenara was finding the itching almost intolerable. Time and again she'd told the barbarian that he should bathe more frequently in between times if he wanted to continue periodically renting out his body to her, and always he promised to

The Book of the Magnakai // 63 remember . . . but always he forgot. One of these days she'd get round to buying him a second set of underwear. The innkeeper was looking at Thog suspiciously. "You don't seem the kind of person to be able to slip in and out of the Zakhan's dungeons without being noticed," he was saying, "and, if you'll forgive me for remarking on it, you seem a trifle too antiquated as a warrior simply to carry off the venture by force of arms." From outside there was a high-pitched gurgling scream, suddenly cut off, as the executioner claimed another victim to the glory of Kimah. "All is not always what it seems," said the barbarian, the reflective words coming incongruously from the great boorish mouth with its stained, cracked teeth. "In fact" – and now he was speaking to himself – "always all is not what it seems." "Are you from the Sharnazim?" said the innkeeper, having nervously decided that he might as well ask the question straight out, because if the Sharnazim had him in their sights he was as good as dead anyway. "No, fellow, that I'm not," said the barbarian. "I'm a friend of Allani's – a very good friend – and I've spent much of this day seeking out another who will be as good a friend to him as I. Have I found one?" "I am but a humble innkeeper and . . ." "Are you a friend to Allani?" The innkeeper made a sudden decision. "Come into the room at the rear with me," he said. "We can talk more confidentially there." Thog rose, leaving his ale largely untouched. "Berril!" bawled the innkeeper, and a thin, anxious-looking woman appeared in a doorway, wiping her hands on a grimy towel. "Look after the bar for me a while," said the innkeeper. "I have matters of business to discuss with this gentleman here." Berril looked at Thog in frank disbelief. "Oh," added the innkeeper just as the two men were leaving the room, "and find time later today to put fresh sheets on the cot in the cellar – the second cellar – will you? It seems that we may be expecting a visitor." # The morning brought Lone Wolf a numb pain, the sensation that someone had put his head in a giant vice and was slowly tightening the screw, a lurching nausea, a rainbow of sickly wet colours surrounding every brightly lit object, and a curious sensitivity to even the slightest of noises – the sigh of the wind through the Skyrider's rigging, the soft whine of whatever it was that powered the craft, the snoring of the dwarfs in their bunks . . . This last was far

The Book of the Magnakai // 64 from a slight noise: the dwarfs' stertorousness was as powerful as the brew that had produced it. Lone Wolf climbed out of his bunk with some difficulty – and not just because of its confusing smallness. As he sat on it his knees came up to his chin; after a couple of moments of painful and painstaking thought, he put his head between them for a while until he felt a little better. A little. Some while later he left the dwarfs snoring and went out on deck. It was an hour or so after dawn, and in the thin light of the rising Sun he was able to see for the first time the true marvels of the region through which they were passing. They had left off following the Dahir Pass at some stage during the night. Here there were still outcrops and pillars of rock, and they were still as menacing in their sharpness as they had been the night before, but now that Lone Wolf could see their colours he forgot all of his thoughts of danger. The rocks of the Dahirs were largely metamorphic, punctuated in places by large and small igneous intrusions. The result, where the rock was naked, was a marbling of bizarrely juxtaposed hues, swirling against each other as if the Gods had only just finished stirring them; here and there a darker granitic rock from the magma below had been eroded into visibility by the action of wind and water, or denuded through rock slippage. The most striking characteristic of the region was the way that tall towers of rock had been left by the erosive forces, pillars among which the Skyrider was making its careful way. For a long time Lone Wolf just stood by the edge of the Skyrider watching the walls of the pass drift by. Around each new corner there seemed to be a new wonder waiting for him to behold. He glanced down just once: during the night Banedon must have brought the flying ship up to a much higher altitude, because the floor of the valley through which they were passing was thousands of feet beneath them. Suddenly he heard the pitch of the Skyrider's propulsion change, and with the gentlest of lurches the craft began to slow down. A few minutes later it was hovering motionlessly in the shade of a massive stone outcrop. Picking his way through the tackle on the deck, Lone Wolf made his way to the control platform to see what was happening. Banedon was waiting for him, and welcomed him with a tense, thin-lipped smile. No longer were there the lines of magical flux playing across his features. Despite his welcoming words, he was looking concerned. "Look up there," he said, pointing ahead. Lone Wolf followed his finger. "Storgh!" he swore. "Yes," said Banedon. "I've just noticed them. I can only hope that they haven't noticed us."

The Book of the Magnakai // 65 The vast outcrop threw a great area of mountainside into shadow, but beyond this the sunlight played on gentler slopes. Against the bright backdrop Lone Wolf could see, a couple of miles distant, fluttering black shapes that he knew must be Kraan – presumably with their riders. Between where the Skyrider hovered and the valley, the landscape was a weird assemblage of crazily steep slopes and impossibly jagged ravines. Most striking of all, however, was the multitude of thin, vertical igneous pillars that jutted upwards from the valley floor – some to heights so great that they were almost as tall as the mountains that flanked them. It seemed incredible that they should remain standing there and that the slightest puff of a breeze didn't send them cascading and fragmenting to the ground. "We're in the Koos, are we, Guv?" said Quan, suddenly appearing beside them. "Pretty trembly until you gets used to 'em. Mirkin once wrote one of 'is odes about 'em." Banedon tapped him on the shoulder to shut him up, and pointed, as he had done for Lone Wolf. "Ah," said Quan. "That puts another kettle of fish on it, Guv, dunnit?" Only about a mile away, perched on two pillars either side of the narrow pass they were following, were a pair of Kraan. Lone Wolf could just make out their riders, who seemed to be scouring the valley with their eyes. "They were expecting us," he said. He found that he was almost whispering, even though they were far enough from the Drakkarim that he could have shouted without much fear of being heard. "Of course they were," said Banedon a little acidly. "They may be stupid, but they're not absolute imbeciles. Once they lost us they must have realized immediately that one of the places we were likely to seek refuge was in the Dahir Pass. From the pass there are only a limited number of possible exits, and the route through to the Koos is one of them. Our only hope is to wait them out – to hope that they'll come to think that they've missed us, that we've made better time than in fact we have, and have already passed through here in the night." "We could plug 'em," said Quan eagerly. "I'll go and get my . . ." "No," said Banedon sharply. "Even if we were able to pick off these sentries, there are still their fellows in the valley beyond. Besides, with luck they'll conclude that we followed some different route – we don't want to give the game away." It was a frustrating business, just hovering there in the lee of the outcrop, when all of Lone Wolf's instincts were telling him that they should be making as rapid progress as possible. The waiting chafed against his mind, and he walked endlessly the length of the Skyrider, inwardly raging impotently at the delay. Once or twice Banedon mildly told him to settle down – perhaps to try a hand of

The Book of the Magnakai // 66 cards with the dwarfs, who were betting and counter-betting with noisy excitement in the cabin to the rear – but Lone Wolf knew that he wouldn't have been able to sit down and relax for more than a few seconds, so he shook his head wordlessly and continued his restless pacing. The delay seemed to last forever, but was probably only an hour or two. Then, finally, the two sentries took to the air and fluttered away out of sight. Soon there were no signs of any Kraan ahead of them. Even so, and despite the most forceful of Lone Wolf's curses, exhortations and threats, Banedon insisted that the Skyrider remain where it was for a further hour, until he was utterly satisfied that it wasn't a trick, that the Kraan's riders hadn't spotted them and gone into hiding, waiting in ambush to assail them when the craft moved into the less cluttered terrain of the valley ahead. At last he was satisfied. "Trim the sails, Nolrim," he said with quiet firmness to the dwarf who happened to be nearest at the time. The little man scuttled to obey, shouting for the others to come and assist him. The hum of the Skyrider increased in both volume and pitch, and Lone Wolf was barely able to hear Banedon add under his breath: "We've a fast run ahead." His tone was not reassuring. Lone Wolf glanced at him nervously, but the magician's face was impassive. At first, however, Banedon kept the Skyrider's speed to a minimum, cautiously nosing the craft among the pillars of the Koos. The scenery became if anything even more breathtaking, but Lone Wolf in his impatience hardly had eyes for it – he was more concerned with scanning the skies for any evidences of the Kraan. Where they were now travelling, the distant valley floor beneath was of a vastly different character from earlier: sulphurous water was bubbling and steaming from fissures in the orange ground, and streams of hissing lava carved circular channels that glowed in the shadows like moats of liquid fire. From this distance they could hear nothing of the activity beneath, so that this drama of the landscape was performed silently for them; the only sounds were the cold wind against the sails and the whine of the Skyrider itself. After a while Banedon began to relax, and this was the sign for Lone Wolf to do so as well. The Skyrider picked up speed, which meant that, in seeming paradox, the noise of whatever propelled it decreased. "What does propel this craft?" asked Lone Wolf ruminatively running his fingers through the tangle of his beard. It was a long time since he'd had a chance to wash it – or any other part of him, for that matter – and it was feeling greasy. "And what keeps it aloft?" "Repulsive magnetism," said Banedon with a smile. Lone Wolf looked at him blankly. Sometimes when Banedon was talking Lone Wolf had the feeling that he was

The Book of the Magnakai // 67 understanding only about one word in three. He waited hopefully for the third word. Banedon's smile turned into a laugh. The magician ducked as Lone Wolf playfully cuffed out at him. "The sorcerers of Dessi," explained Banedon a little later, "told me a little of it. In fact, they told me quite a lot of it, but much of what they said was beyond me. The magical parts I could understand, but I gather the Skyrider uses also elements of Borian technology. Apparently the world itself has magnetism. That's why compass needles work the way they do. Like any other type of magnet, the world can attract other magnets towards it if they're placed one way, and try to drive them away if they're placed the other." Lone Wolf looked sceptical. It was his experience that it didn't matter which way up you turned things: if you dropped them, they fell. He was certain that the same was true of magnets. Banedon saw his bewilderment, but battled on. "There's an engine of some eldritch kind in the hull," he said, "that's able to detect which way around the magnet of the world is pointing at any particular moment, and to tell the magnets in the Skyrider itself to point the other way, so that the world pushes them – and the ship – up into the sky. Of course, if we want the craft to land, the engine tells fewer and fewer of the magnets in the hull to point that way, and so the world starts to attract us in towards the ground. Of course, the effect wouldn't be powerful enough on its own, and so this crystalline sphere here" – he tapped it with what Lone Wolf regarded as a shameful lack of respect – "has been charged by the wizards of Dessi with sufficient magical energy to multiply the magnetic forces a thousandfold, or even more. You see?" Lone Wolf still looked baffled. He was groping for one word in four, now. "You're right," said Banedon after a while. "I don't understand it either." They cruised on for an hour or more. They had left the Koos behind some time ago and were passing above the western foothills of the Dahir Mountains when Lone Wolf next said anything except for inconsequentialities to Banedon. "Have you any idea where we're going?" "Yes," Banedon replied promptly. "We're going in search of Tipasa the Wanderer. He's a compulsive explorer, roaming all over the Dry Main, but in between his excursions he always comes back to the same place, the town of Ikaresh, where he was born and where his family still dwells. The name means `The Eagle's Lair'. If we're lucky he'll be there at the moment. If not . . ." Banedon shrugged and let the words drift away in the brisk breeze.

The Book of the Magnakai // 68 "One of his family might be able to tell us where he is," prompted Lone Wolf, eagerly scanning the desert landscape that was opening out before them for any signs of human habitation. "No one," said Banedon darkly, "is likely to know where Tipasa is if he's not in Ikaresh. He doesn't exactly leave an itinerary behind at home." Lone Wolf accepted this, and began to pray to Ishir that she should bless them with good fortune in this instance as she had so many times in the past. # By late afternoon they had crossed the strip of desert in which the town of Ikaresh lies and had entered the foothills of the mountains beyond. They had given the town itself a wide berth, since Banedon had no particular wish to alert its inhabitants to the fact that there was such a thing as flying ship in the vicinity – beside the fact that Lone Wolf was hoping to enter the town as covertly as possible, they had no way of knowing how many Darklands spies, or their Vassagonian cronies among the Sharnazim, might be in Ikaresh. To Lone Wolf's surprise, Banedon abruptly announced that he was going to accompany him into Ikaresh; Lone Wolf had assumed that, having deposited him within striking distance of the town, Banedon would take the Skyrider and travel on, or perhaps return to the oasis. But Banedon would have none of it. The dwarfs, he declared, could remain with the Skyrider in seclusion among the foothills, but Lone Wolf should have somebody with him to guard his back. He, Banedon, might be no great swordsman, but as he had proved when he'd crushed the Drakkar, he had other abilities that were in their way just as useful. Besides, Tipasa might be willing to talk to Banedon, who had come to know the people of Vassagonia well during his years there, whereas the wanderer might be understandably reticent when confronted by Lone Wolf's foreign and, to him, uncouth ways. Besides, Banedon spoke Vassagonian quite fluently, whereas Lone Wolf's accent was execrable and vocabulary limited. Besides . . . Lone Wolf understood. Banedon was as eager as he was to hear more about the Book of the Magnakai and where it might be found, and he wasn't going to be content to remain cooped up in the Skyrider while Lone Wolf was discovering more about it. Like it or not, Lone Wolf had a companion. The pillars of rock on this side of the desert valley were tiny compared with those of the Koos, but they were still impressive enough in their way, some of them topping a hundred feet. Here the rock was mainly of a dull reddish-orange colour, rather like the sands over which they had been passing; the pillars, by contrast,

The Book of the Magnakai // 69 were nearly black. To one of them they moored the Skyrider, about twenty feet above the ground. Nolrim, as chief physician among the dwarfs, took charge of disguising Lone Wolf. He obviously enjoyed the task, dabbing with brushes and his thumbs until he was satisfied that Lone Wolf's face was exactly the right colour for him to pass as a Vassagonian. The concoction he used, made from the juice of copalla berries, stank when first applied, so that Lone Wolf's eyes watered, but luckily within a few minutes the smell dissipated. Lone Wolf's blond beard presented more of a problem, but Nolrim managed to dye it black using some mixture of his own devising. Finally the dwarf trimmed the beard – a process that Lone Wolf found even more irritating than all that had gone before – and pronounced himself satisfied. Banedon watched all this smugly. By an effort of will he was able to create the illusion, in the eyes of anyone who looked at him, that he was a typical Vassagonian male of middle age. "What happens if you get knocked unconscious?" said Lone Wolf waspishly as Nolrim fussed about his face. "I'll just have to make sure I don't get knocked unconscious, won't I?" said Banedon lightly. Little more than an hour remained before sunset when the two of them, clad in the grey and white jellabahs commonly worn among these mountain people, climbed down a rope ladder suspended from the Skyrider and found themselves standing on a gentle slope. A few miles away they could see an ocean of desert sand. "Good luck, Guv," said Quan from above them. "Paste 'em one for me." Behind him, Nolrim shouted: "We'll be waiting for you, Banedon." The magician looked up at his vessel and at the row of small faces peering down over its edge at him. "Don't wait longer than a week," he said. "If we're not back by then, we won't be coming back at all."

The Book of the Magnakai // 70 CHAPTER FOUR Vermilion Sands Lone Wolf looked around him, savouring the fact that at last he was the correct distance from the ground. Flying was all very well, and he had appreciated some of the beauties of what he had seen as well as the sheer exhilaration of being so far aloft, free like a bird from the claims of gravity, but all in all he was glad to know that the surface beneath his feet was solid, and that there was no way that he could fall through it or off it. The ground he was standing on was not, on examination, particularly appealing. All around them, the landscape was stark and desolate; the only vegetation that seemed to be able to survive this close to the desert was a type of hard, wiry grass, which formed mats of thin covering through which the red of the underlying sand was clearly visible. Lone Wolf stooped down and tried to break of a blade of this grass but, twist and tug as he would, it resisted all his efforts; he gave up when he realized that he was in danger of slicing open his palm. Even though it was so late in the day, the heat was still intense. The evening wind was blowing up, and puffs of sand occasionally swept towards them. Lone Wolf was glad to be able to pull the hood of his jellabah around his face, covering his mouth and nostrils; he noticed that Banedon had done the same rather than trouble to expend extra magical effort to keep the sand out. They trudged downhill, bent forward into the wind, which was now becoming quite strong and blowing more continuously. To begin with they'd exchanged idle pleasantries as they'd walked, but now the wind would have carried away any but shouted words, so each kept his own thoughts to himself. Lone Wolf felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw that Banedon was gesticulating off to the right. For a moment Lone Wolf could see nothing of interest, his eyes narrowed against the wind and the sand. Then he realized what it was that Banedon was suggesting. There was a dried-out river bed creasing the hillside over there. While the shelter it would offer them from the elements would not be good, it would certainly be better than nothing. Lone Wolf nodded his agreement to Banedon. But if anything it proved to be even worse in the wadi. The wind off the desert was channelled by the course, and drove particles of sand at them with stinging velocity. Lone Wolf looked at Banedon as if to say, "That's another fine mess . . ." but then he shrugged. It wasn't Banedon's fault. He began to wonder if they wouldn't have been wiser to have remained aboard the Skyrider for an extra night, and to have set off for Ikaresh in the morning. He supposed it still wasn't too

The Book of the Magnakai // 71 late for them to turn back, and he almost proposed as much to Banedon, but something to do with the combination of how difficult it would have been to make himself understood over the howl of the wind and his own perennial disinclination to retrace his steps stopped him from doing so. Which was just as well, because Banedon had spotted a cave and was waving him on towards it. That would give them protection from the elements and perhaps even a haven for the night. It was obvious that during the short Vassagonian rainy season water came tumbling in huge volumes out of that cleft in the hillside to pour down towards the thirsty desert sands. There was only the slightest of chances that it would provide the home of any wild animals – besides, what large animal would be able to survive in this waste? All there was to eat was the impossibly tough grass. As they came close to the cave they found evidence that humans had been there. Some yards to the left of it, tacked crudely to the soft sandstone of its rocky surround, was a wooden plaque. Burnt into the wood was a Vassagonian word which Lone Wolf didn't recognize – and neither, to the surprise of both of them, did Banedon. "I can usually work out strange words in this tongue by putting together the glyphs that I already know," said the magician as they stood inside the cave-mouth, thankful that at last they were away from the wind. "All I can get from this one is some intimation of danger, but I can't sense anything – or anyone – that wishes us any harm whatsoever." He looked troubled. "Still, it'd be as well to go carefully." "Perhaps it's to warn people to stay clear during the wet season in case of flash floods," suggested Lone Wolf. Banedon shook his head, still looking worried. "No, it's not that," he said. "I'm sure I'd have recognized the glyph for `water' or something like that." Night had fallen outside with typical desert suddenness, but Banedon, after pausing for a moment's concentration and manipulation of his fingers, caused the walls of the cave to glow with a dull, milky light which was just sufficient to allow them to see where they were going. All around them were stalactites and stalagmites, their seeming flimsiness belying their obvious strength: they must accrete slowly, just a little bit more each year during the long dry season, and then be able to withstand the full force of the rushing torrents that filled this place during the brief rainy period. Lone Wolf reached out and rapped his fist against one, hard, and received bruised knuckles for his trouble. "D'you hear that?" said Banedon at one point, reaching out to grab Lone Wolf's sleeve. Lone Wolf stopped. Far away in the distance there was a faint hissing, bubbling noise.

The Book of the Magnakai // 72 "What is it?" he said, the echoes of his voice drowning out the small noise. "I'm not certain," said Banedon, "but it sounds to me like a geyser. If it is, that'd imply that there's some volcanism still going on around here. If so, things must get pretty dramatic during the rainy season when the water hits the hot rock." Lone Wolf imagined the scene. "It's a good job it's not the rainy season, then, isn't it?" he said matter-of-factly. "Come on, let's get this place properly checked out so that we can bed ourselves down for the night." The cave proved to be a complex of caves, and far more extensive than they had at first thought. Here and there small streams meandered across the rocky floor, washing away the sediments to reveal the dark grey lava beneath. In the light from the walls their waters looked black, but when Banedon conjured up a brighter light at one point – they were crossing a chamber where the footing was treacherous – the two of them could see that the water was in fact a deep ochrous red. Despite their tiredness, they were finding the task of exploration fascinating, and after a little while neither of them thought to mention any further the idea of finding a comfortable place to sleep. They grew less self-conscious about the noise they were making, clattering around among the rocks and shouting to each other over each new discovery. And discoveries there were a-plenty. Lone Wolf was particularly fascinated to find that the cave system nurtured a whole series of lifeforms that had obviously adapted to the gloomy environment and its odd seasonal cycle. Most ubiquitous were the little scuttling creatures he dubbed "lavacrabs". In fact, they were less like crabs than like swift-moving, ghostly-pale lobsters. The first time one scrattled across his path he leapt back with an oath, instinctively fumbling beneath his jellabah for where the Sommerswerd hung awkwardly against his side, but after that he became fascinated by the little creatures. Although they spent most of their time in the shallow streams, they were far from averse to crossing open rock. Sometimes they stopped as he passed, and he had the uncanny feeling that they were observing him with just as much interest as he was observing them. Lone Wolf and Banedon were inching cautiously over a narrow bridge of solidified lava when an odd whuffling noise came to their ears. They froze, looking around them in the dull light. The sound was repeated. It seemed to be coming from directly beneath them. Lone Wolf looked at Banedon and Banedon looked at Lone Wolf, then with one mind they edged back off the bridge. Lone Wolf drew the Sommerswerd as the advanced once more. The golden glow from the weapon's blade lit up the underside of the rocky arch. There they could see, cowering away

The Book of the Magnakai // 73 from them at the edge of the sluggish stream, the ramshackle figure of an incredibly emaciated man. His tattered blanket and his straggly hair hid his face. He was still clutching a fishing rod crudely fashioned from a branch of lime-coloured wood and a line painstakingly plaited from the tough grass they'd seen outside. Beside his painfully thin feet lay a brace of lavacrabs on their backs, their claws clacking as they tried in vain to right themselves. Lone Wolf's eyebrows rose. The man must be very poorly coordinated if he had to fish for the creatures. It would have been much easier for him simply to have scooped them up off the rock as they scuttled between streams. Then the man revealed his face and, as Banedon drew in his breath in horror, Lone Wolf realized why the unfortunate wretch had chosen to fish the lavacrabs from the stream. In his sightlessness it was easier for him to react to the tug on his rod than to the swift sound of the lavacrabs' claws as they ran. But it wasn't the man's blindness that had so appalled Banedon – the streets of Barrakeesh were full of blind beggars, who encouraged flies to cluster around the empty sockets where their eyes had been in order to evoke from sympathetic passers-by more coppers for their bowl. It was the face itself. It was like something out of nightmare. That the eyes were sightless was evident: the eyeballs were merely cracked yellow chitinous shells, through the fractures in which oozed a sticky greyish pus. The nose had almost disappeared, having seemingly been rotted away as if by the action of some powerful acid. The cheekbones had collapsed inwards, as had the skull of the forehead above the nasal septum, so that in both regions the grey, decayed-looking skin hung in loose, mouldering folds. The lower jaw, by contrast, remained firm, but this only served to accentuate the way in which the remains of the man's lips drooped in rags around his chin from his toothless mouth. "Vaxelus," muttered Banedon. "Incurable. I've heard about it but – thank Ishir! – I've never seen it before now. And I hope with all my soul that I never see it again. Lone Wolf could guess what had happened. Unfortunate enough to succumb to the ravages of this hideous disease, the poor wretch had been cast from his home and banished into the cave to live out his final days in solitude and misery, far from anywhere he might be able to infect others of his community. If the disease didn't kill him by the time of the onset of the rainy season, the flooding surely would. This must have been what the sign at the cave entrance had been trying to tell them. Lone Wolf bit his lip in perplexity, but all that served to do was to remind him of the vaxeler's lips. The healing abilities that he possessed as a Kai were efficacious enough in simple matters – such as healing Banedon's broken bones and torn muscles – but they would be useless to help in the case of a wasting disease such

The Book of the Magnakai // 74 as this: the progress of the disease had gone far too far for him to able to reverse it, and simply arresting it would scarcely be giving the miserable sufferer much respite. He looked inquiringly at Banedon. The magician held his gaze for a few seconds and then turned away, sombrely shaking his head. Like the healing abilities of the Kai, left-handed magic had its limits. Were another powerful second-level magician to be here – Jenara, perhaps – it might have been possible for the two of them together to have constructed synergistically a sufficiently powerful matrix to make the man whole again, but even then he gravely doubted it. Lone Wolf was still holding the Sommerswerd, and their two soul-stuffs were fully commingled. He called half-heartedly upon his Kai gestalt for guidance, and to his astonishment that aeons-old voice responded. Remember, Lone Wolf, it said mustily inside his mind, how you cured yourself of the limbdeath that infected you while you were in the Baga-darooz, the great sewer of Barrakeesh. No magic could have helped you then, and nor could any Kai powers assist you, yet . . . Yes! That was it! The oede he'd purloined from the imperial apothecary, back in the Zakhan's Palace in Barrakeesh. The slithery golden stuff had taken little more than minutes to turn his arm from a numb, useless, lifeless piece of meat back into its normal healthy whole. Reflexively the muscles of his left arm twitched, as if to remind him of their restored strength. Somewhere he still had some oede. Although he'd left many of his possessions aboard the Skyrider, he'd brought a small collection of them in the pockets of his jellabah. He prayed to Ishir that the little packet of oede was among them as he turned them out onto the flat surface of the rocks beside the bridge. He was in luck. There it was. Stuffing everything else away again, he opened up the package and tipped the few golden, clammy leaves out onto the rock. As he did so he had some qualms: he hoped that on some future day he wouldn't find himself cursing the fact that he'd squandered his last remaining supplies of the precious herb on a stranger. Then he mentally chastised himself. The fact that he was still alive today was partly as a result of the kindness strangers had extended towards him – to the point where some had risked and even lost their lives. Why was he to begrudge this forlorn wretch his last possible chance of a cure. And chance was all it was. Even though the gestalt seemed convinced that the oede would be efficacious, Lone Wolf was certain that his gestalt was less omniscient than it liked to pretend. "For you," he said to the cringing man. "It is oede. It may bring you some relief." At first the man appeared not to have heard him, then not to believe what he had heard. But then one of his skeletal hands reached out in supplication, and deliberately Lone Wolf laid the leaves of the herb on it.

The Book of the Magnakai // 75 He watched as the bony fingers closed. The man rubbed the leaves between his fingers and thumb, feeling their heavy slipperiness. He smiled in wonder and gratitude, as if the Gods had just opened up the doors to paradise and welcomed him in. A strip of grey flesh fell from his lower lip to land on the rock. Banedon turned away weakly. "Thank you," croaked the vaxeler, his voice barely louder than the sullen wash of the trickling stream at his feet. "Thank you in the name of the Majhan, whoever you are." He touched the oede to his cheeks, cautiously at first, and then with gathering confidence, rubbing the leaves firmly against his putrid flesh, careless of any further physical damage he did to it. This time Lone Wolf, too, turned away, joining Banedon about ten yards distant to watch with amused detachment the activities of a colony of lavacrabs. They watched for more than half an hour, trading remarks about the weather, women, Vassagonian politics, women, their plans, women – anything that came to mind except the ravages of vaxelus. "I can see," came a voice behind them at last. "The Majhan have mercy! I can see!" They turned. In the grey light they saw a man of medium height and pitiful skinniness standing beside the bridge. His clothing was just a collection of tatters and he looked as if the weight of no more than a small child were spread tent-like across the frame of his bones. But he was holding himself erect, and there was a certain pride in his stance. They drew closer, and reluctantly Lone Wolf sneaked a look at the man's face. The transformation was astonishing. The Vassagonian would bear vivid scars for the rest of his life, and he would never again draw the shyly admiring glances of the womenfolk, but neither would he frighten the children into screaming fits. A tapestry of scars surrounded his mouth and there was still a certain rawness about his nose, but Lone Wolf had seen faces far more deformed than this in the many taverns and inns he had patronized during his journeyings, and had thought nothing of them. And the shells that had been his eyes were gone. There were tears in the orbs that gazed at them, but the gaze itself was clear. "Never can I thank you enough, strangers," said the man. He bent, and pulled a bundle out from a crevice beneath the bridge. Swiftly he pulled away the cloth covering to reveal a mace of exquisite beauty and elaborately expensive decoration: this was no weapon but an object designed to grace the home of a nobleman. Lone Wolf reached out and touched it.

The Book of the Magnakai // 76 "This is all I have," said the Vassagonian humbly, "but it is the merest bauble compared with what you have given to me. If you desire it, it is yours, but I would not wish to offend you with something so trivial in recompense for your gift." Lone Wolf looked past him at Banedon, who gave a little shake of his head. Lone Wolf breathed more easily. He'd been uncertain as to the correct Vassagonian etiquette. The man was presenting the mace to him in such a fashion that it was perfectly courteous to decline the present. Lone Wolf had no need of an ornament: should he wish for a mace it would be to help him defend himself against his enemies, not to embellish the walls of the palace he did not have. At the same time it would be a breach of courtesy not to recognize the value of the gift. "I thank you for your present of this great treasure," he said formally, "and I accept it." Banedon frowned suddenly. "But," Lone Wolf continued, "I cannot take it with me to where I and my friend are going, so I must ask of you something more: that you act as my guardian of it until such time as I request it from you." The Vassagonian bowed his head gravely. Banedon looked a little startled at the adroit way in which Lone Wolf had solved the dilemma: warriors, including Lone Wolf, were not widely renowned for their social subtlety. "There is another gift we ask of you," said Banedon after a short pause. "Only tell me what it is, strangers, and if it is within my power to give it to you then it shall be yours." The man's dark eyes looked fleetingly and nervously around the beautiful but barren cave, as if he were despairingly trying to think of anything else he might be able to offer them. "We're bound for Ikaresh," said Banedon, "in search of a man. His name is Tipasa." "Tipasa!" The Vassagonian's face became immediately wary. "Are you his friends or his enemies? If you are his enemies, I can tell you nothing. When I offered you any gift, I did not include the life of another human being. I would rather you took my own life from me. You would have given me at least the memories of these last few minutes of it to carry with me into the next life." Lone Wolf laughed and clapped a hand to the man's shoulders, almost knocking him to his bony knees. "Then we are well met!" he said loudly. "We bear only friendship for Tipasa but, even were we his foes, I would admire and honour what you have just said, my friend." They sat down beside the bridge. Banedon produced some hard cheese and some bread that was, dismayingly, almost as hard. The Vassagonian had difficulty with both, but nevertheless

The Book of the Magnakai // 77 managed to eat a considerable amount. He reached out at one point and absent-mindedly righted the two lavacrabs he had caught earlier; they scuttled off gratefully for the refuge of the stream. "I knew Tipasa once," he said between mouthfuls. "It was many years ago, when I was young and strong like you two are today." His eyes seemed to be looking down a vastly long corridor to a place where there was a door open on the events he recalled, so that he could see them still happening, their colours flickering across the screen of his mind. "There were maybe twenty of us gathered around him. All of us were equally fearless – it'd have taken a brave man to suggest otherwise! – but Tipasa was ever our leader. Once we sailed with him to the far north, where we found a land where the snow lies thick on the ground and the ice is like rock, so that even the noon-time Sun is powerless to melt it . . ." "I've been there, too," said Lone Wolf, smiling at the recollection. It hadn't been too much to smile about at the time, being in Kalte, but there were some good memories mixed in along with the bad. "You have?" said the Vassagonian, looking at Lone Wolf and giving a little nod of further respect. "So often, when I've told of that place people have disbelieved my story. Easy enough for those who've never ventured beyond the fringes of the desert . . . And then there was Samiz, where we fought against the Lakuri pirates – I'd have died that day had it not been for Tipasa's valour. These past few months" – he shook his head sadly, and looked as if he were about to weep – "I've often wished that he'd let me die under the blades of those scum." "Where is Tipasa now?" urged Banedon. He'd finished eating, and had no wish to waste the night listening to Lone Wolf and the Vassagonian swapping reminiscences about the adventures they'd had in faraway lands. Fascinating those reminiscences might well be, but he was impatient either to get some sleep or to push ahead to Ikaresh. "I've been away from my home for months now," said the man simply and slowly, turning towards Banedon and spreading his hands. There were crumbs of bread around the corners of his mouth. "When I was found to be a victim of the vaxelus and banished to this place he was in Ikaresh, not long returned from yet another of his journeyings. It is his custom to bide at home a year or more between-times so, if the Majhan is smiling upon you, you will find him there." "Is that all you can tell us?" The Vassagonian could read the bitter disappointment in Banedon's face. "Not quite all," he said. "Seek out the Widow Soushilla in Ikaresh. She has sharp eyes and ears: there is little that happens in

The Book of the Magnakai // 78 the town that she doesn't know about. She's always had a bit of a fondness for Tipasa, too, so if anyone can tell you where he's to be found, she can." # Thog crouched in the doorway, listening to the somnolent buzz of the imperial sentries as they watched the city of Barrakeesh begin to settle down for the night. Their talk was all of the escape of the four strangers who had been in the palace and its dungeons the day before. Thog grinned as he heard himself referred to more than once as a knucklehead and a blubberbrain, though he stiffened with annoyance when one of the guards jokingly proposed that the love the barbarian felt for his mother was less than wholly spiritual. Thog – the part of him that was Thog – gripped the haft of his morningstar and vowed that, if ever he identified the soldier responsible, there would be an exhibition of the coup de la main force et incompréhension so spectacular that reports of it would thunder down through the generations until the Sun itself went cold. But this was not the time. Jenara imposed her will on him, and once more he froze in place. She reached out with her mind, finding the fern-like tendrils that were the consciousnesses of the sentries. It was tempting simply to turn these back in on themselves, so that sleep would come to capture the men, but from the very first she had discounted this stratagem: it would be all too obvious, should anyone come across the sleeping guards, that magic was once again at work in the environs of the palace, and that its practitioner was still within. She had no qualms about being caught inside the complex of dungeons herself, of course – the fact that she had escaped from it once made her off-hand about the prospect of doing so again – but it would be plain to anyone who thought about it that the object of a magical intruder would almost certainly be to release Allani. It would be a tragic irony if her efforts to assist him served instead only to hasten his death. In one of Thog's pockets there was a small, writhing creature. He had captured it back at the inn, waiting in still patience for several hours beside a hole in the wainscoting until the animal had timorously poked its sensitive, twitching nose out into the open air. Now Thog put his beefy hand down into the warm darkness of his pocket gently. As he touched the animal it bit him viciously on the thumb. "What's that?" said one of the guards sharply. The conversation ceased. "Sounded like someone saying . . ." "Yes," agreed one of the others. Swiftly Jenara tweaked the fringes of their minds.

The Book of the Magnakai // 79 "Probably just the soughing of the evening breeze," said one, and the rest immediately agreed with this implausibility. "Evening breezes do sough, you know," added a different, rather petulant voice. They resumed their idle chattering as if nothing had happened. In the shadows Thog sucked his thumb, tears in his eyes. In the days when men had been men, women had been loose, and "lich" had been a word on everyone's lips, you'd known where you were with small animals: they behaved themselves and acted respectful, or they got barbecued. How things had changed. He hated the rodent in his pocket and he hated Jenara for having forced him to catch it and put it there. Now the sour bitch was telling him to put his hand in his pocket again! Did she think he was stupid? No one saw as a lacerated hand the size of a T-bone steak reached out from the shadows and deposited a small furry animal on the cobblestones near to the palace's side-gate. The animal looked behind itself, towards the shadows, decided it preferred them to the bright lights near the sentries' hut, and prepared to turn back. Thick fingers waggled threateningly, fascinating the furry creature. It approached them, its small brain trying to fathom what these huge moving objects were. Thick fingers knotted into a fist. The furry creature came closer. This was really interesting. Darkness mercifully smothered an expletive. The hand opened out again, scooped up the creature, flinched as tiny teeth sank deep, and flung the animal a couple of yards into the open. It landed stunned. "In the name of the Majhan!" screamed one of the sentries. "What's that?" "A monster!" came a quavering reply. In hiding, Thog looked at his ravaged hand and wondered whether to feel gloomy or happy. He decided on happy when he heard the commotion from the guard-house – shouts of dismay and terror, weapons being drawn, furniture being knocked over. It was all very satisfactory. "Ten feet tall if it's an inch!" shrieked one of the sentries. "And look at the teeth on it!" "You're the officer in charge," said another voice, keeping itself under control with obvious difficulty. "Lead us into the attack!" "I – someone's got to stay here and decide strategies, direct operations in the field, and so forth. Since that is clearly my resp . . ." "You go out there first or my sword will make mincemeat of your liver 'n' lights!"

The Book of the Magnakai // 80 ". . . but in the circumstances I feel that we can forgo a fixed operations-control centre and . . ." "Now!" ". . . I'll therefore bravely lead you scum out to face . . . There's no hurry, you know. Perhaps it'll just go away." Coming to its senses, the little animal twitched its nose inquisitively and looked in terror towards the place where the light was brightest. "Did you see it? It's planning to smother us with its nostrils, it is!" "I could have joined the navy, you know." "The eyes! The eyes! They'll haunt me for the rest of my life . . . except I'll be dead then, of course." "I am hurrying up! If I could only find my cursed scimitar I'd lead you out there right now!" "It's in your belt, you craven oaf! Sir." "Ah, yes, but which belt?" Scenting the remnants of the sentries' supper, the creature essayed a tentative scuttle in the direction of the guard-house. Perhaps it hadn't been noticed. None of the sentries noticed as a seven-foot-tall barbarian, the contents of a small armoury clanking around his knees, walked past them and into the grounds of the Zakhan's palace. # Lone Wolf and Banedon did not tarry much longer with the man whom they had helped cure. Soon they were leaving the cave to find themselves under the gaze of the crescent Moon and a million stars. They'd decided to push ahead for Ikaresh that night rather than rest until the morning – a decision taken in part because the Vassagonian had told them that the winds hereabouts were always at their worst around sunrise and sunset, the days and the nights being relatively tranquil. They could travel in the cold of the night or the mind-paralyzing heat of the day – and they'd opted for the cold. They blundered and stumbled down the last few hundred yards of the slope, the tough grass seeming to take sadistic delight in inventing new ways of tripping them up when they were least expecting it. In the distance they could see the lights of Ikaresh spilling out over the desert sands. Lone Wolf kept the Sommerswerd drawn in case they should come across a predator, but neither of them was too much concerned: Banedon was keeping a mental look-out in the darkness for any traces of animosity towards them, and would be able to give warning in good time of any potential attack. Once they were on the desert itself their progress was quicker. Even though walking across the sand felt like wading through shallow water, they were able simply to aim themselves

The Book of the Magnakai // 81 directly towards Ikaresh's light and maintain that direction over and between the dunes. Within a couple of hours they were on the outskirts of the town. Although it must have been around midnight, there were still people around. One of them even invited them, as strangers who must be weary, to stop and take refreshment in his home while they told him of their journeyings. They declined the invitation but, as Lone Wolf pointed out to Banedon, it was a good sign that the citizens were prepared to be so hospitable. Soon they were on clay track that led them windingly along the bottom of a gully. There was still a slight breeze, enough to blow surface sand from the desert above their heads down in small but curiously penetrative clouds down on top of them. For the first time since they'd entered the cave on the hillside they were forces to bury their faces in their hoods. Almost before they realized it they were standing in a small square just inside the east gate of Ikaresh. All around them were low, flat-roofed whitewashed buildings. The centrepiece of the square was a tall monolith of black stone which Lone Wolf identified with some surprise as basalt; the natives of Ikaresh must think the edifice of considerable significance to have brought such a weight of rock so far from where it occurred naturally. In the light of the torches surrounding the square they could see that there was the bronze image of an eagle affixed to the column. "`The Eagle's Lair'," said Banedon. "That's what the name `Ikaresh' means. The citizens must have adopted the eagle as the symbol of their town." "A strange choice," muttered Lone Wolf. "There are no eagles in the desert." "I don't know the whole story," said Banedon, "but it's something to do with the history of the place. I recall Jenara talking about it one evening at the oasis – but we told each other so many stories then that I can't really remember the half of them, even the ones where it was me doing the telling. So far as I can remember, the Ikareshi were once a mountain people, but they were driven down here during a civil war, or an insurrection, or some other such upheaval." Lone Wolf yawned pointedly. Vassagonian history seemed to consist of little else but civil wars and insurrections. The barbaric repressions that take place between-times must seem like holidays to them, he reflected. "To the desert they brought with them not just their memories but also the spirit of freedom born of the high mountains," Banedon persisted. "The symbol of the eagle encapsulates that spirit of freedom." "Which way shall we go?" said Lone Wolf, looking with interest at a three-branched figure that the eagle was holding in its beak. Each of the branches was an arrow corresponding to one of

The Book of the Magnakai // 82 the roads leading out of the square. He was peering in the poor torchlight to see if he could decipher the Vassagonian script on each of the arrows. Banedon looked at him resentfully. He'd been just about to embellish his story of Ikaresh's past with some particularly imaginative and bathetic details that had just occurred to him. Having checked that there was no one around, he raised himself a few feet off the ground and screwed up his eyes. "That way," he said, pointing, "takes us towards the main square at the centre of the city." "Hmmm." Lone Wolf looked down the relevant street and saw little but darkness. "Doesn't look as if the nightlife's throbbing down there. Try again." "That's the Avenue of Eagles." Again Banedon was pointing. "It doesn't say here where it leads to, if anywhere. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad." "Neither do I." "And the other one'd take us to the dougga market." He lowered himself once more and looked at Lone Wolf expectantly. "Don't your much-vaunted Kai abilities tell you anything?" he said acidly. It had been going to be such a good yarn as well. "Not a lot," said Lone Wolf. "No more than your magic is telling you, in fact. Hush a moment," he added distractedly, cocking his head to listen to the sounds that the night air brought him. "That way," he said finally, pointing towards the Avenue of Eagles. "Why this way?" said Banedon, falling in beside him as Lone Wolf set off purposefully. "Because someone's being violently sick somewhere along this road, which would suggest that there's a tavern or taverns in this direction – and it's in taverns that we're most likely to pick up news about the whereabouts of this widow . . . what's her name?" "Soushilla," supplied Banedon. "One thing I do know about the Ikareshi – a word of warning: you can trust them with your life, but not with your money. Guard your purse well, Lone Wolf. There are likely to be pickpockets everywhere." "Like that, is it?" A grin in the darkness. "Exactly like that," Banedon concurred. Soon they were in a brightly lit area, crowded with people, eating-houses and, as Lone Wolf had predicted, taverns. Men, women and children were in every doorway, gossiping or arguing or simply looking around them as their small corner of the world went by. The noise was incredible, with the screaming of babies providing a sort of overarching countertheme to it all. Banedon was all for diving into the first tavern they came to, but Lone Wolf stayed him.

The Book of the Magnakai // 83 "I could do with something a bit more refreshing than ale to start with," he said, "and so could you. Time enough for ale later. Smell that?" Banedon breathed in deeply and winced. There were all too many things to smell, and few of them were especially pleasant. The chief constituent of the corporate odour was badly tanned dougga hide. It was no accident that the people of this region had had so little success in their attempts to market the tough material elsewhere in Vassagonia. "Smell what?" he said testily. "Jala," said Lone Wolf. "Delicious, steaming jala. Just what you need after a long trek through the desert, my friend." Still grumbling under his breath, Banedon followed him into a nearby eating-house. The noise outside had been loud, but in here it hit them like a fist. The large rectangular room was full of townsfolk seated in threes and fours at small stone tables, many of the men puffing on ornate hubble-bubble pipes as they discussed the issues of the day. Lone Wolf and Banedon, trying to look unobtrusive, sat down at one of the tables beside two rough-faced Ikareshi and tried to conceal the effect that the men's dougga-skin coats were having on them. The men proved to be friendly, however, even offering them each a puff on their hubble-bubble pipes. A girl sold Banedon and Lone Wolf each a cup of jala for a gold crown apiece and, after her offer of other, scarcely more expensive, services had been declined, left them with a laugh to try her luck at another table. "Have you come far, strangers?" said one of the men with interest. "Down from the mountains," said Banedon vaguely. Lone Wolf was keeping his silence as much as possible, since his mastery of the Vassagonian tongue was at best rudimentary, except in the rich area of maritime oaths, and suffered from a strong Sommlending inflection. "And what brings you to Ikaresh?" Banedon spun a long and complicated story of how they had travelled all across the mountains in search of the fabled Tipasa Edarouk, whose journeyings were legend across all Vassagonia. They wished to learn of his exploits and to seek ways whereby they could emulate them. There was much of this, and Lone Wolf paid it scant attention, instead letting his eyes wander around the room. The aromatic jala was returning energy to his tired body and making his mind seem crisper and more optimistic. "Haven't seen him around for a while," one of the men was saying, "but that doesn't mean much. Keeps himself to himself, Tipasa does. You could ask the Widow Soushilla – she'll know if anyone does." The man looked a little worried as he said it. "We've been told that already," said Banedon, accepting another puff from the man's pipe. "But where might we find her?"

The Book of the Magnakai // 84 The man looked at him blankly for a moment, and then laughed. "Of course, I forget you're a stranger, my lad, despite your funny accent. Everyone in Ikaresh knows where to find the Widow Soushilla. She'll be in her tavern, the Crocked Condor – the roughest place in town. Few people drink there twice." A dark touch of a finger to the side of the nose. "But if you're tired of having gizzards, go up Avenue of the Eagles until you get to Eagle Square, then take the road that leads to the dougga market." As they reached Eagle Square for the second time Banedon muttered something about much-vaunted Kai abilities. "Shut," said Lone Wolf, "up." # If noise had been the first thing to greet Lone Wolf and Banedon as they'd entered the eating-house on the Avenue of Eagles, their welcome to the Crocked Condor was even more impressive. As one they ducked the flying tankard that shattered the glass of the door to land somewhere in the street behind them. They stood aside respectfully as a knot of indivisibly mingled human flesh, predominantly fist, rolled out through the remains of the door, down the two or three steps to the road and, as if propelled by some hidden engine, slowly off towards the centre of town. "Quite aesthetic, really," said Banedon dryly. The scene was watched impassively by a group of children sitting outside the drab barracks opposite. In front of the tavern was tethered a line of saddled douggas, and the animals gave ear-splitting tongue every time one of the children boredly threw a larnuma fruit in their direction. Most of the time, though, the children threw their fruit at the sentry dozing outside the barracks, on the basis that he was less likely to give chase. They seemed to be having a competition to see if one of them could land a fruit so that it impaled itself on the point of his spear, which was the only vertical part of his otherwise slouching form. "Nice quiet neighbourhood you've brought me to," growled Lone Wolf. "You go first," he added, gesturing towards the wreckage of the door. "No. I insist. After you." Banedon gave a mock-courteous bow. Inside, it was clear that some kind of celebration was in progress. The only edged weapon being worn was the gold-mounted sword hanging in a blue velvet scabbard at the belt of a splendidly dressed little man who was clearly one of the foci of attention; the rest of the swords, daggers, maces and morningstars were piled in a much chained and padlocked heap over in one corner. Guarding the heap was a stout old woman dressed in black whose grim visage signalled clearly that she had never had need of an edged weapon in her life.

The Book of the Magnakai // 85 "That'll be her at a guess," said Lone Wolf, nudging Banedon and tipping his head slightly towards her. Identifying her was one thing; reaching her was another. The small, rotund man was embracing all of those in the tavern who were not engaged in fighting. Beside him stood a slender woman, a little taller than he was, dressed in yellow to symbolize her purity, her face concealed behind a veil of shimmering pearls. "A wedding," said Banedon, stating the obvious. With difficulty they skirted the various brawls and rough festivities that were in progress until they neared where the old woman was sitting smoking her pipe. Just as they did so, a band of musicians struck up a discordant air, and most of the conscious wedding guests began to join in an anomalously formal dance in the centre of the room. Banedon was surprised, as he leaned forward, to see tears starting in the Widow Soushilla's eyes. "My favourite melody," she mused aloud, not realizing he was there. "`Hanging's too Good for 'Em.'" She began to hum along wistfully. Banedon coughed. She started, aware for the first time of his presence. "Who're you, and what do you want, scum?" she snarled. "We're wanderers," said Banedon politely, raising his voice so that he could be heard above the cacophony, "and we seek the greatest wanderer of them all." "Tipasa?" she said suspiciously. "Yes." "What business d'you have with old Tipasa?" she asked. "He's a friend of mine, and I don't trade his name for no silver." There was a pregnant pause. "Oh, thank you. Gold'll do very nicely." The crown that Banedon had proffered vanished as if by magic. After a while the Widow Soushilla added ruminatively: "I'm getting old and my memory's not been so good since my husband died." The wedding dance was beginning rapidly to deteriorate, and Banedon was eager to get out of the Crocked Condor as soon as possible. With a sigh he opened up his money pouch again and then cursed vehemently. Lone Wolf remembered the warning Banedon had given him about pickpockets, and smirked as he reached for his own pouch, securely tucked away inside the folds of his jellabah. "Would five gold crowns bring back the crystal-clear memory of your youth?" he inquired respectfully in his strongly accented Vassagonian. Her eyebrows arched.

The Book of the Magnakai // 86 "You have come a long way," she said, clearly intrigued. "To have come so far in search of Tipasa and fail to reach him by such a short distance would be for the Majhan to commit an injustice. Since I am a devout woman and do not wish to bring the name of the Majhan into disrepute, I shall tell you where my old friend dwells. But" – and here a wrinkle of concern travelled across her broad face – "it's some days since I've seen him here. He may be ill. Tipasa wouldn't have gone without telling his old friend Soushilla that he was off on his travels again, and without sharing a tankard or six of ale with me to give him good luck on the road." The five gold crowns joined their brother in her capacious cleavage with the same astonishing rapidity. "Let me point you the way," she said, rising to her feet. # Following a route dictated to him by Jenara's questing mind, Thog tramped cheerfully through the maze of corridors that underlay the palace. Until a couple of days ago, these corridors had rung with the screams of the tormented and the quiet, desperate weeping of those who had simply been confined in a situation of constant terror for too long. Now most of the cell doors hung open, some dropping on hinges that had been vengefully shattered when he and Banedon had led the exodus of the prisoners from the Zakhan's dungeons. Getting back in here had proved easier than expected. The Sharnazim had left only one of their number on guard at the main entrance, on the principle that there were no longer any captives within whose escape had to be prevented. It obviously hadn't occurred to them that anyone might actually want to come in. Which was foolish of them, because the vast dungeon complex still held two prisoners in its bowels, and those prisoners were very important ones indeed so far as the affairs of Vassagonia were concerned. Haakon would have howled his wrath at the Sharnazim's lack of forethought. Thog flexed his knuckles appreciatively. A single puny guard had been no match for the doughty fist of Thog the Mighty – the fist that in yesteryear had . . . Jenara moved incisively to force him to concentrate on what he was doing and where he was. There would be a much heavier precautionary guard around the place where they were holding Allani, she knew: The fist of Thog, however stalwart in adversity, would not be able to incapacitate a troop of a dozen or more armed Sharnazim. She would have to use magic in some form or another to create a diversion or otherwise put them out of action – exactly what she would do she'd decide once she'd had the chance to spy out their disposition around his cell.

The Book of the Magnakai // 87 Just at the moment, though, her mind wasn't on the matter: she was much more worried about the Nadziranim. She knew that there were some – probably only two or three, but quite feasibly more – of the evil right-hand-path magicians in the palace environs. She didn't know what she'd do if she encountered one. Like Banedon she was a second-level magician, but it had taken their united psychic force and skill to overcome just a single Nadziran, and even then they could hardly be said to have vanquished it: it had fled from them, but there could have been any number of unknown motives for its flight. She could feel Allani's mind becoming more defined in her own consciousness as she came closer to the place where they were keeping him. It couldn't be far now. He was calm, she was glad to sense, and confident that, even if he did not survive his captivity, he would be able to meet his death with dignity. And then Thog stopped in his tracks as confusion filled Jenara's mind. There was someone else imprisoned down here! And it wasn't just some poor miscreant who'd happened to be overlooked when the others made their escape. No, this was a cold mind, accustomed to the exercise of ruthless power and now, even though part of it was wallowing in the misery of its own downfall, mostly it was contemplating with cruel satisfaction the vengeances it planned to exact upon those who had brought it here. Thog shivered. Jenara was not enjoying the clammy, insinuating touch of that mind. It was human – there was no doubt about that – but it was of a quality of humanity that lacked all humaneness. For a couple of seconds she thought it might be that of a Drakkar; but no, while the Drakkarim minds she'd touched shared many characteristics with those of human beings, they had also a distinct alien veneer that was lacking here. She wished she could understand the thoughts going on in that mind more coherently, but so much of what it was thinking was shrouded in a deep emotional miasma that she could catch only stray "words" and "phrases", as if she were trying to hear what someone with a soft voice was telling her across a boisterous tavern. Thog shrugged. Whoever the person was, to judge by the patterns of mental energy that Jenara was reading it was probably just as well that he – or she – was securely locked up. It was no concern of theirs. Round another corner to the right, and then Jenara forced Thog's body to start moving with a greater delicacy. Allani's mental traces told her that her lover was now very close to them indeed. It couldn't be long before they began to encounter Sharnazim sentinels. Certainly she could detect that there were a few of them around; the trouble was that their thought-patterns

The Book of the Magnakai // 88 were so similar to each other that it was impossible for her to determine how many of them there were, let alone pinpoint their positions. And there was one now. Thog caught just a glimpse of the tail of a black cloak vanishing past a corner ahead of him. The Sharnaz must have been walking along the corridor at right angles to this one with his eyes fixed firmly ahead of him; had he glanced to the right he could hardly have failed to see the barbarian's huge form half-filling the passageway. He hardly needed Jenara to remind him that now was a time for caution. After some thought he selected his sword, Skullcrusher, from the arsenal at his belt. The weapon's edge was nocked many times over and its blade was a dull, unreassuring grey, but it had served him well over the decades and the feel of it in his hand was comforting. He crept forward. Kneeling down, he briefly popped his head around the corner and then withdrew it again. About ten yards from where he was there was a broadening of the passage. Two Sharnazim were seated there, neither of them seeming to have anything to say to the other; they merely sat slumped, staring at the floor, obviously bored to the point of stupefaction. Thog grinned. It would positively be doing them a favour to crack their skulls together. It'd give them a bit of excitement – brighten up their day, as it were. Jenara swiftly curbed him. The noise would indubitably attract others, and they had no way of knowing how many or from what direction. Better to use her own, more subtle methods. And then, with a suddenness that took Thog's breath away, she realized the identity of the other mind that she'd been overhearing. The Zakhan! But how could Kimah be languishing in his own dungeons? Had their been a palace coup? Understanding began to dawn on her. Of course. The only person with the power to have Kimah confined would be Haakon himself. There had been too many failures on Kimah's part – thanks to the activities of herself, Banedon, Qinefer and now Lone Wolf. The Darklord would be thirsting for a scapegoat. Who better than the Zakhan who had promised him so much and given him so little? Her mind ran through all the ramifications. The operation must have been executed by Haakon's own Drakkarim. Had the palace guard or even the Sharnazim been involved the news would have been all over the city by now. Besides, she doubted whether even the Sharnazim would have obeyed the orders of the Darklord rather than of their sworn master, Kimah: they were treacherous,

The Book of the Magnakai // 89 cruel and devious in many ways but, like all Vassagonians, it took a lot to make them go back on their word once they had pledged their solemn oath. Now she knew what she had to do, The two men were startled when a voice spoke out of the empty air between them. "Kimah has been imprisoned in these dungeons," it announced, not loudly but quite clearly. They looked at each other incredulously, each for a moment thinking that the other had said the words. Their misconception was banished a moment later. "Kimah has been imprisoned in these dungeons," the voice repeated. "He is imploring you to set him free." "Did you hear what I just heard?" said one of them. "Yes," said the other, "and it's all poppycock." "Just the soughing of the breeze?" "Well, not quite that. But something like that." They settled back in silence once more, but both of them were now fully alert, their bodies tense in their chairs. "You swore an oath of allegiance to Kimah," said the voice a second later. "If you leave him to rot in his dungeon you will be betraying that oath." "Where is he, then, know-all?" said one of them, affecting boredness, as if this were all just a silly game. The voice gave them approximate directions. "It's probably all just moonshine," said one of the Sharnazim, "but you'd better go and check. I'll stay here and guard the pretender. It'll be OK with just the one of us – we haven't had a chirp out of him for hours." The other stood up and stretched as if going for a stroll had been entirely his own idea. As a matter of course he checked the eyehole in the cell door behind where they'd been sitting and then he lounged casually off in the direction the disincarnate voice had suggested. "I give him about three minutes," Thog growled to himself satisfiedly. It was quicker than that. Barely two minutes had passed when there was a sudden and brutally punctuated yell. The Sharnaz by the cell door leapt to his feet, his scimitar in his hand faster than the eye could see. "By the Majhan!" he swore, and then he yelled: "Ramah! What's going on?" There was no sound except that of heavy armoured bodies moving with attempted quietness. "Who's there?" shouted the sentry. No answer. The man was plainly terrified, but his military training was standing by him. He checked the cell's wooden door to make sure

The Book of the Magnakai // 90 that it was securely locked, then tucked the key away securely in his belt. Only then did he bawl: "Sharnazim! To me, to me! Intruders!" Thog pressed himself into a nearby cell whose door had been left open by its one-time occupant. He was only just in time. Three Sharnazim sprinted past, paused at the corner, and then rushed towards the sentry. Other feet could be heard converging from other directions. The sentry was explaining everything in a high fast voice – there were intruders in the dungeon complex, Ramah had found them but was probably now dead, there was reason to believe that the Zakhan Kimah had been incarcerated by vile traitors. There was a full-blooded yell of vengeful rage as the Sharnazim moved away to expel the interlopers . . . Wonder who'll win? thought Thog to himself. The Drakkarim, almost certainly, Jenara responded. Come on, we may not have much time. Thog flexed his mighty fist – the fists of titans could not have been more eagerly flexed. The guard's jaw had been only a hors d'oeuvres preceding the ecstatic thrill his fist was now going to experience. He took a few swift paces, confronted the cell door, raised his adamantine fist – a fist fit for a king, he thought idly as he looked at its splendour – and with a single blow smashed the door to matchwood. Allani looked up in astonishment from the rickety bench where he sat amidst the cell's stench. "What the . . .?" he said to the vast barbarian figure tottering in the place where the door had been. "Darling," it rumbled. "I was terrified that I might have lost you forever." Half an hour later, and the little furry rodent was beginning to enjoy itself, scuttling hither and thither without any of the big lumbering creatures trying to interfere with it. None of the guards at the gate noticed a seven-foot-tall barbarian clanking past the guard-house, and certainly none of them noticed the slight, bedraggled but still dignified man who slipped past behind him.

The Book of the Magnakai // 91 CHAPTER FIVE The Dispossessed "At last," said Banedon with feeling. "I was beginning to think it was going to be more difficult tracking down Tipasa than finding the Book of the Magnakai itself." The Widow Soushilla's instructions had been clear, and so it had taken them only about an hour to find themselves at the end of a narrow alley, facing the battered-looking door of Tipasa's house. Even though it was by now the middle of the night, some of the streets through which they'd passed had still been alive with hustle and bustle. It seemed that, in Ikaresh, people paid little attention to the course of the Sun and Moon across the sky: the night was as good as the day as a time for doing business. Certainly the dougga market had still been in full swing, with desert-dressed merchants and nomads loudly contesting the prices of the swift-moving animals; other things had been on sale there, and Lone Wolf had delighted in watching Banedon's chagrined face as he'd used the contents of his money pouch to buy some dried milk cake and sheep's butter. There were no lights burning in the house, but Lone Wolf rapped on the door firmly; even if it meant waking Tipasa from his slumbers, Lone Wolf wanted, if possible, to be out of Ikaresh before daybreak. There was no reply. "I suppose it's the right house," said Banedon dubiously. "The widow said we could tell it by the blue door, but it's so dark in here that it's hard to tell." He looked around him and huddled himself a little further into the folds of his jellabah. Alleys are much the same wherever you are, he thought. Always the walls seem to be hiding secrets, and to be trying to press in against you. He saw, framed against the brightness of the market square they'd just left, the heaps of rubbish that had been simply hurled out of upper windows to rot in the alley below. An old man in rags was sleeping noisily with a mouldering, half-eaten loaf of bread as his pillow. The place stank of decay, stale urine and neglect. Lone Wolf was just about to raise his fist to knock again when the door groaned open a few inches. He could see a single terrified eye staring out at him. "Who are you?" said the ancient voice of a woman. It was cracking with fear. "Friends," said Lone Wolf simply. "We come in search of Tipasa Edarouk." "He's not here." The door began to close.

The Book of the Magnakai // 92 "Wait!" said Lone Wolf, trying to make his voice imperative while at the same time not frightening the crone. "Have we come to the right place? Is this his home?" "Yes, but he's still not here." "Do you know where we might find him?" said Banedon, joining Lone Wolf in front of the narrow opening. There was a second's pause and then the old woman said: "If you could tell me that I'd be forever in your debt." This time, however, she made no move to shut the door further. Lone Wolf and Banedon looked at each other. From the old woman's obvious fear and grief, it was clear that Tipasa hadn't merely departed on another of his explorations: there was something seriously wrong here. It crossed Lone Wolf's mind that Tipasa might have run off with a younger woman, or something, but then he irritatedly banished the thought from his mind: that was his Sommlending background speaking to him; in Vassagonia it would have been perfectly socially acceptable for Tipasa just to have imported the hypothetical younger woman into his own household. "May we help you?" he said gently. "We need his assistance badly. If you could give us any information you might have that would assist us in our search for him then, if we find him, we could return him to you." Another pause while the woman digested this and ran over the possibilities in her mind. Lone Wolf stayed absolutely still, while Banedon scuffed uneasily from one foot to the other; the magician felt as if he were somehow intruding into a personal grief, that he was trespassing on someone else's emotional estate. "Lone Wolf, don't you think we should . . .?" he began. "Quiet, Banedon," said Lone Wolf softly. "`Banedon'," said the woman. "I seem to have heard that name before. Perhaps Tipasa mentioned it to me. You a friend of his?" "No," said Banedon perplexedly. "I know of him only by repute. I can't think of any reason why he should know my name." The woman was obviously thinking. From the small segment of her face that he could see in the poor light, Lone Wolf could tell that she was racking her memory. It was possible, of course, that the explorer had encountered another Banedon: the name was very uncommon, but it wasn't unique to the magician. He let her carry on thinking without interruption: the longer she thought, the more likely it was that she'd decide to ignore her doubts and fears and choose to help them. "I know," she said suddenly, startling both of them. "You're the boy who lives with his mother at the oasis near Barrakeesh, aren't you?" "Why – yes," said Banedon, astonished. He and Jenara had maintained the fiction that they were mother and son when

The Book of the Magnakai // 93 speaking with the drivers of the passing camel-trains; it had saved all sorts of inconvenient questions. "Tipasa was there only a few weeks ago," she said. "He told me about you. He reckons – reckoned – that you're a pair of Sommlending wizards." Again Banedon was astonished. "How could he have known that?" he said. She laughed, although there was no real gaiety in it. "There are few things that Tipasa couldn't observe, if he'd a mind to it. Then it is you?" "Yes – yes, but . . ." Lone Wolf had been noticing how the woman kept referring to Tipasa in the past tense. "Is your husband dead?" he asked bluntly. "He may be, he may be," she said, all trace of its momentary animation leaving her voice. "You'd better come in." She opened the door, and they shuffled unhappily into the darkness of the little house's front room. Again Banedon had the crawling sensation that he was invading someone else's intimate property. The woman moved with birdlike quickness for all her age and her obvious infirmity. Soon there were torches radiating their warm light from the walls, causing shadows to play childhood games with each other on the baked-earth floor. Lone Wolf sucked in his breath as he looked around. Clearly the room had been sparsely and shabbily furnished to begin with, but now it looked as if a hurricane had ripped through it. Some effort had been made to herd together all the shattered pieces of furniture – table-legs, chair-backs, a torn rug, and so forth – towards one corner. In the cleared space there was a single chair, its back partly missing; in front of the chair there was a wooden cup half full of water and a wooden plate on which lay a curling crust of bread out of which a single, small mouthful had been taken. "I wasn't expecting visitors, you see," said the woman by way of explanation. There was a glint of bitter humour in her eyes. It was clear that she was on the verge of weeping; to judge by the puffiness of her face and the redness of her eyes, she'd been doing little else but weep these past few days. "It doesn't matter," said Lone Wolf, mustering a smile. He squatted down on the floor with his back against the wall next to the window. "We didn't come here to admire your home." His irony matched hers. He looked around him and felt rage swell. Someone – and he was beginning to guess who – had wrecked not just this woman's possessions but also, in so doing, the cornerstones of her life. Her friends – if she had any – might rue her loss, but they would console her with remarks to the effect that she herself was unharmed, that the only things to have been damaged were, after

The Book of the Magnakai // 94 all, mere objects. And that's not true! thought Lone Wolf furiously. What these intruders did was commit a sort of mental rape. She'll never be able to look at anything she owns again without remembering the time that her home was defiled . . . He looked across at Banedon, seated by the empty fireplace, and saw that the magician was thinking much the same thoughts. They raised eyebrows to each other in acknowledgement of the fact. Lone Wolf cleared his throat as the woman sat down in the solitary chair. Its joints creaked under her slight weight. "Let me tell you how we come to be here, and then you can decide how much you'd like to tell us," he began. He had intended to give her a severely edited version of events – to tell her as much as he thought she needed to know and no more – but to his surprise he found he was spilling out everything that had happened since his arrival only a few short days ago in Vassagonia. Perhaps it was the earnest way with which she intently watched his face as he spoke, or perhaps it was simply that the time was overdue for him to be able to talk about it all with somebody – any somebody. He didn't know. Whatever the reason, the words kept coming, with Banedon intervening from time to time to add details of his own part of the story. When he had finally finished the old woman smiled. It was like watching the first warmth of spring turning the surface of the snow to glistening water. Yet there was a very great sadness in her smile. "I believe you," she said at length, "and I know that if Tipasa were here he'd want to help you trace the Book of the Magnakai and confound the Darklord. Yet, at the same time, I know he'd have tried to dissuade you, for the Tomb of the Majhan is a graveyard also of human souls: he wouldn't willingly have sent you to your deaths." Again that sorrowful smile. "I'll help you in his place, if you wish, but there's not much assistance I can give you. He tells – told – me so little." The tears were very close now. She put her face in her hands, hiding her eyes from them. Banedon pulled himself stiffly to his feet – Lone Wolf's account of their exploits had taken above an hour – and went across to put his arm tenderly around her shoulders. Gratefully she leaned her head against his stomach, her shoulders jerking. Yet still she held the tears at bay, somehow . . . just. The story she told them in fits and starts, punctuated by minutes in which all they could hear was her painful, irregular breathing, was much as Lone Wolf had expected. Ten days ago, late at night, the men with the masks of death – "Drakkarim," Banedon quietly and unnecessarily prompted – had come to the house. Tipasa had been asleep upstairs. She'd opened the door, assuming that it was merely a neighbour or a friend calling by, and

The Book of the Magnakai // 95 then watched in horror as the Drakkarim had forced their way past her, throwing her backwards against the wall and holding a dagger to her throat to stop her from screaming. As Lone Wolf and Banedon could see, the Drakkarim had torn everything in the house apart; they'd carried on doing so even after Tipasa had been bundled downstairs, his hands tied behind his back, his mouth gagged, his eyes still bleary with sleep. Clearly they'd been looking for something, and she admitted that, had she known what and where it was, she'd have told them – anything to get them to cease their brutal, senseless destruction. And then, giving her one final cuff across the mouth, they'd departed, taking her husband with them and telling her that, if she raised the alarm over the next few days, both his life and her own would be forfeit. Since then she'd been sitting here in the devastation of her home, too frightened to go out, too sick at heart to eat, just watching the endless succession of evilly sharp black arrows that seemed to her mind's eye to be questing for her heart. Finally the dam burst and she began to sob. Banedon gently stroked the sparse white hair on her shell-like skull, muttering soothing nonsense-words to her. Lone Wolf, feeling rather callous, ignored the two of them and allowed his eyes to wander around the devastated room. There were even places where the plasterwork had been savagely attacked with an axe, as if the Drakkarim had suspected that the walls themselves might conceal the secret they sought. He mused on this. From what Tipasa's wife had said, the Drakkarim had left without whatever it was they believed to be here. Moreover, Lone Wolf was inclined to suspect that they'd been quite right that the house hid a valuable secret: it was only too obvious that the citizens of Ikareshi had little love for the doings of the Darklord or his minions, and so the Drakkarim must have been pretty firmly convinced that it was worth it before they dared send a group to penetrate the very heart of the city. If they'd been spotted, the Ikareshi would have fallen on them simply for being Drakkarim, whatever their nefarious purpose might be. Hence, too, their stern instructions to the woman that she should keep her silence for a few days: all they'd needed were a couple of hours to get clear of the town, but they'd been playing safe. What could it have been that was so important that it had merited such a risky enterprise? There was another thought nagging at him. The Drakkarim's techniques of extracting information from those in their power were unsubtle, but for all that they were generally effective. He remembered some of the things Banedon had told him of what he'd seen in the dungeons under the Imperial Palace, and he repressed a shudder. He must assume that anything Tipasa had known about the Tomb of the Majhan was now in the ken of the Darklord. That made it all the more urgent that they should

The Book of the Magnakai // 96 discover whatever it was that the wanderer had concealed in the house – if, that is, it was indeed there to be discovered. The woman's sobbing had eased. Her arms were now around Banedon's waist and her shoulders were moving in a slow, steady rhythm. Lone Wolf realized that, exhausted after her days of wakefulness, she was in danger of falling to sleep. "I think I know what it was the Drakkarim were seeking," he said with deliberate coldness. Banedon looked at him reproachfully, but then saw that Lone Wolf was using conscious harshness to shock the woman back into sensibility. "What?" she said in a muffled voice. "His diaries. The logs of his travels. Surely he kept something like that?" "I don't know," she said. "He so rarely told me anything." "Do you recall seeing him write things down?" said Banedon mildly, as if the question were of no particular significance. "Yes," she said. "Writing. He did that. But he never told me what he was writing and . . ." She let the sentence go unfinished, but Lone Wolf already knew what she'd been too ashamed to say. She couldn't read. Her husband had been confiding his life to inanimate sheets of paper, and thereby effectively walling her off from it. "Does he have any books?" said Lone Wolf. "Did the Drakkarim take any books away with them?" "Yes," she said. "Tipasa had books. I'll show you." Taking a torch from the wall, she led them up a dangerous flight of wooden stairs and into a small back room that smelt of disuse. It was only too evident that the Drakkarim had been here as well, but Lone Wolf could make out from the bits of broken wood that the room had been furnished with a desk and a chair and little else. It must have served as Tipasa's study. The remains of perhaps half a dozen books and the same number of scrolls were lying in one corner. The paper had been ripped and crumpled, the bindings of the books torn open. Lone Wolf looked at these remains with narrowed eyes. Someone had spent a deal of time trying to persuade those books to give up any secrets they might hold. It looked as if his guess about what the Drakkarim were after had been correct. Banedon knelt down and ran his fingers across the debris. His face was that of a mourner, as if the destruction of the physical objects had been the destruction of knowledge itself. Lone Wolf felt the corner of his mouth twitch: the magician had always had an almost religious reverence for book lore. He left him to his investigations and took his stint at comforting the woman, who looked as if she were about to collapse. "No," said Banedon after a while. "There's nothing here that can help us. These are – were – valuable books of knowledge

The Book of the Magnakai // 97 of the desert lands of Vassagonia. Perhaps a skilled craftsman could restore them, so that at least the information the contained would survive. But there seems to be nothing specific in them about Tipasa's own discoveries." Lone Wolf bit his lower lip and thought furiously, the old woman's head on his shoulder forgotten. There must be something! Surely the wanderer wouldn't have risked the knowledge of all that he'd discovered going to the grave with him. "Are you sure that these are all the books that he possessed?" he said to Tipasa's wife, almost roughly. "It's vital that we know. Think hard." She was doing her best. He could see the concentration in the tearful eyes that seemed to perch astride the beak of her nose. It was difficult for her, though. Tipasa's books had been merely empty objects; their presence had had no real meaning for her, and so, in a way, they had been invisible to her. Banedon tapped one of the walls to see if it was hollow. The dead sound of his knuckles against the plaster told him that it was not. "That's a good idea," said Lone Wolf. Leaving the woman to support herself, he and Banedon swiftly went over all the walls of the room, testing them for hidden cavities. Five minutes later they had to admit failure. The three of them trooped downstairs again. Lone Wolf looked speculatively around the main room. They might have been unsuccessful in Tipasa's study, but the principle was still a good one. Clearly the idea had occurred to the Drakkarim, too – hence the axe-marks in the walls down here. He was reluctant to ask Tipasa's wife if he could check the walls of the bedroom: again that would have seemed like an assault on her privacy. The fireplace caught his eye. Acting on instinct, he went over to it and began to rattle the bricks of its surround. All of them seemed to be mortared securely in place. He knelt down, frustration gnawing at him, and there was the answer, staring him straight in the face. The brickwork at the back of the fireplace was uniformly black except for the outline of a single brick, which showed up against the rest as a dark grey rectangle. "I think," he said, "we have it." He tugged the dagger from his belt and within moments had succeeded in prising out the loose brick. Sure enough, in the dark cavity behind there was a battered looking book. With some difficulty he slid it out of its hiding place. Blowing dust and soot from it, he stood up with a look of triumph on his face. "Unless I'm very much mistaken," he announced, "this is Tipasa's log of his journeyings."

The Book of the Magnakai // 98 He passed the leather-bound book to Banedon, who opened it with an eagerness tempered by reverence. Lone Wolf watched the magician's face as he pored through the pages. Almost immediately he saw it fall. "Yes," murmured Banedon after a while, "you're right. But a lot of it's in code, and it'd take me some time to decipher it. A deal of the coding seems to be based on the stars" – he held out the open book and pointed at what Lone Wolf recognized as a drawing of the constellation Laricca – "but without my star-charts I can't even begin to understand it." He looked at the woman, not wishing to ask her the obvious question straight out. Lone Wolf had less compunction. He had seen her attitude towards books and their contents. "May we take this book with us?" he said bluntly. "Take it," she said distractedly. "Take it. It's of no use to me, and Tipasa's not here. When you find him" – Lone Wolf was alarmed by her overconfident use of the word "when" – "give it to him. Or, when you've finished with it, bring it back here to await his return." I think it unlikely that your husband will ever return to you, thought Lone Wolf, but he said nothing. # The Drakkar jumped them when they were least expecting it. The streets of Barrakeesh had been sleeping as Thog and Allani had walked easily through them from the palace towards the Talking Wind Tavern, where Allani was to be hidden. At first the two men had been cautious for fear of late-night Sharnazim patrols, keeping to the shadows and making as little noise as possible, but soon they had become more confident, taking the centre of the road and talking to each other amiably. Allani had initially found it strange to be addressing two people at once, especially when Thog's rough voice was enunciating Jenara's tender words, but in due course he'd become so accustomed to the anomaly that he barely noticed it. Smiling, he remarked upon the fact – and that was when the Drakkar sprang. The armoured warrior came from a side-street so narrow that it looked to them almost like a blade of blackness. One moment the main street ahead of them was empty; the next, the Drakkar was on them in a flurry of motion, his black serrated sword sweeping through the air to crash vertically downwards on the dome of Thog's much-dented helmet. There was a clang loud enough to waken the dead, and the big man looked momentarily confused. The flies fled. Allani slipped immediately into the shadow of a doorway and felt for the knife that was always at his ankle. Cursing, he

The Book of the Magnakai // 99 found that it wasn't there. Of course not. The Sharnazim had stripped it from him when they'd seized him. He looked around in the gloom for something he could use as a weapon. Thog had unsheathed Skullcrusher with one hand while shoving the Drakkar firmly in the chest with the other. The unexpected push sent the caped warrior staggering backwards, so that he tripped on the pavement's edge and sat down with a crash of metal against stone. But instantly he was on his feet again, the light from the torches along the street flickering eerily on the painted rims of his mask's eyeholes. Having been surprised once by the barbarian's speed of reaction, he was moving more warily now. Thog growled menacingly. The Drakkar made a feint at him with his sword. Thog, discovering reflexes that he hadn't used in years, countered the thrust with and ease that startled him. It startled the Drakkar too. The warrior backed off, his free hand darting to his belt to grab at his throwing knife. But now the barbarian's left hand likewise held a dagger. Stalemate. The Drakkar was becoming nervous. He'd been covertly observing the two criminals for the past twenty minutes or so and had come to the conclusion that the barbarian was big but an easy pushover and that the slim Allani, while potentially more dangerous, was unarmed and therefore couldn't be expected to put up more than a token fight. He wished, now, he'd gone in search of reinforcements before attacking. Too late. Thog was moving onto the offensive, taking a couple of paces forwards, Skullcrusher moving threateningly to and fro in the narrowing space between them. His other weapons, jangling at his waist, were ignored. The Drakkar feinted and then counter-feinted with dizzying speed, his second blow nicking Thog painfully across the back of the knuckles of his sword hand. The big barbarian didn't flinch. Instead he caught Skullcrusher's blade against the Drakkar's own and then used the leverage of the Drakkar's own sword to run Skullcrusher in a shower of sparks all the way up the serrations to cut deeply through a joint of the Drakkar's glove and into the flesh at the base of his thumb. Blood flowed, but the injury had been more symbolic than painful. The Drakkar shrilled a curse. The swords disengaged. Still Thog was advancing, and now the Drakkar was nervously retreating, one short and reluctant pace at a time. Thog was concerned that the Drakkar might turn and flee, thereby surviving to tell his fellows that he and Allani were in this part of

The Book of the Magnakai // 100 the city. The warrior must be silenced, and the only sure way of silencing him was to kill him. Left-handed, Thog threw his dagger underarm directly into the Drakkar's stomach. The blade bounced harmlessly away off the armour, but the movement was enough to distract the Drakkar for a brief instant. In that moment Thog swung Skullcrusher around horizontally, striking the warrior's armour a colossal blow a few inches above the waist, denting in the metal so that it crushed cruelly into the man's side, inhibiting his breathing and forcing him to move with a limp. The Drakkar gasped loudly in shock and pain, and Thog's face wrinkled as the fetid breath invaded his nostrils. Yet he forced himself to maintain his concentration. Still the windows all around them remained dim. The occupants of the nearby houses must by now have been alerted by the commotion, yet they chose wisely to have nothing to do with it. Fights in the Barrakeesh night were usually vicious affairs, and bystanders were frequent casualties. Much better to stay securely tucked in bed. The Drakkar might have been disabled but he was certainly far from spent. He ceased his retreat suddenly and then took a rapid step towards Thog, his black serrated sword a blur of motion as he weaved a complicated embroidery of different moves and feints, ending with a low blow intended to sever the tendons at the back of the barbarian's knee. The manoeuvre failed only because the blade was stopped by the haft of Thog's mace, hanging from his belt. The clash numbed the Drakkar's hand a little, just enough for Thog to be able to take advantage of the moment of disconcertedness in order to step back himself and flail downwards with Skullcrusher to strike the man's armour a little above the wrist. The sword was deflected by the metal, but the shock fractured the bone within. The Drakkar let out a whimper of pain, quickly snatching the hilt of his sword with his left hand, dropping his unused throwing knife. His right hand, in its armoured glove, was now hanging uselessly. Thog allowed himself to relax slightly, which was a mistake: the Drakkar was as adept with his left arm as with his right. The caped warrior saw the momentary lapse in concentration and stabbed forwards with his sword, aiming for the side of Thog's ribcage. Thog swiftly went on tiptoe and half-turned his body away to evade the jab, but he wasn't quite quick enough. The point of the sword pierced his clothing and sank into the flesh just behind his breast. There, fortunately, it met a rib; the bone stopped it from puncturing the barbarian's lung.

The Book of the Magnakai // 101 With a yell of rage he brought Skullcrusher up between the Drakkar's legs to strike him in the groin. Again the blow was symbolic rather than effective; Allani, waiting helplessly in the shadows, winced, and the Drakkar himself half-doubled up. Thog brought his meaty left fist down on the back of the Drakkar's head, then skipped aside as the warrior fell face-forward into the flagstones of the pavement. His death-mask saved his face from punishment. Before Thog could realize what was going on, the prone man had been able to swing his sword around close to the ground and hammer its blade against the ankle of the barbarian's boot. Luckily for Thog the Drakkar hadn't had the time to adjust his hold on the sword, and so it was the flat rather than the serrated edge that struck. Even so, the blow was a painful one; he was moving lopsidedly as he charily retreated a couple of steps. The Drakkar was on his knees now, shaking his head to clear it. For a second Thog delayed, suspicious that this might be another trick to lull him into a false sense of security; then he slashed downwards with Skullcrusher, dealing the Drakkar a ferocious blow on the back of the helmet so that the metal pinched inwards. Again the front of the Drakkar's mask was hammered against the stone. This time it was jolted clear out of its hinges, skittering away towards the gutter as he screamed his fury and agony and rolled away. Thog hobbled after him. Even in the old days he'd never come across an opponent capable of taking so much punishment and yet still being able to respond with agility and quick-wittedness. The Drakkar must now be in almost unendurable pain from the dent at the back of his helmet, yet apart from the wheezing of his breath he was showing no signs of suffering. In the darkness Allani cursed. He had found nothing in the shadows that he could use as a weapon in order to assist his saviour. And his lover, locked up as she was in that behemoth of a body. Unless . . . The Drakkar was back on his feet again. Both men were swaying slightly as they stood, gasping for air because of their pain and their exertions. For the first time Thog saw a Drakkar's face. Nausea stirred his stomach. It was like looking at the grinning visage of a skull, but much worse than that. This was of a skull over which had been laid a thin veneer of dead skin which had then dried to form a dark leather. The large, coarse teeth were uneven and coloured the yellow-brown of decay. The nose was a flat region of corruption, as if there the skin still lived. In the caverns of their sockets, the eyes seemed to be aflame. A forked tongue of liverish flesh licked

The Book of the Magnakai // 102 spasmodically at the corners of the almost lipless mouth. And that mouth was locked into a permanent, seemingly mocking leer. As well it might be. The Drakkar's sword was wheeling round at an inclined angle towards the side of Thog's head. With a bellow he simultaneously ducked his head away and raised Skullcrusher in an attempt to deflect the blow. He wasn't totally successful, but the two movements combined to take away much of the blow's power as it struck him not on the cheek but on the side of the helmet, temporarily deafening him. There was still enough force in the blow to knock him to his knees. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Drakkar advancing confidently to administer the coup de grace, and he remembered what his foe had done scant seconds before when on the ground. Thog rapidly manipulated Skullcrusher around so that the edge of the blade smote the Drakkar with full force on the right ankle, and this time Thog was lucky enough to encounter a joint in the heavy armour. The blade dug deep, cutting through flesh and arteries to grind against the bone. Even through the muffling mist that seemed to fill his head, Thog could hear the sound of the Drakkar's scream of anguish. Dark blood rushed across the back of the barbarian's outstretched hand. Thog couldn't remember having got to his feet, but somehow he was standing again. The world seemed to be ebbing and flowing, so that he was having difficulty in focusing his eyes. But he was able to see clearly enough as the Drakkar took a couple of tormented steps towards him. In the agony of that dreadful blow to the ankle, the man had bitten almost clear through his tongue, so that the lower part of his face and the whole of his armoured chest were covered in the blood that was still gushing from his mouth. The pain proved too much even for a Drakkar. Before he reached Thog his knees crumpled, and with a last penetrating scream he collapsed noisily down onto the flagstones, his head crashing to the ground just an inch or two short of Thog's boots. The almost severed tongue was still twitching. Without compunction, feeling that he was performing an act of mercy, Thog took Skullcrusher's hilt in both hands and stabbed down with the weapon violently, ripping away the Drakkar's throat. There was silence, except for the ironic call of a distant night bird. Then Thog realized that he had heard that call. His head was clearing, and his hearing had returned. He was miserable that he had had to kill. He was rejoicing that he was victorious.

The Book of the Magnakai // 103 His heart sang, because he could hear the small sounds that Allani was making as he emerged from the shadows to join him. For a time the barbarian had thought that he was going to be deaf forever. The two men looked down at the remains of the Drakkar. "I guess we'd better get rid of him," said Thog heavily, his breathing still a harsh grating in his chest. "Where do you suggest?" There was a note of considerable respect in Allani's quiet voice. Thog appreciated it. It was something he hadn't heard from anyone in a long time. "The best we can do, I suppose," he replied, "is dump him back up the alley he came out of." "I'll do it. You look as if you've exhausted all your strength for a while." It was true. Thog staggered to a low wall nearby and sat down heavily. He watched Allani struggle with the weight of the Drakkar's armour as he dragged the corpse back into the obscurity from which it had sprung. His ankle throbbed agonizingly – it would be blown up like a balloon by the morning unless he got a compress on it soon – and the slash across his knuckles was stinging as if all the wasps of Magnamund had been set upon it. He looked at the wound with a sort of bear-like curiosity. There was surprising little blood, and he sucked away what there was of it. He could see a gleam of bone at the knuckle of his index finger in the instant before the blood welled up to fill the wound again. "There's not much we can do about the rest," said Allani, who had returned from his grisly task. He was looking around him at the gore spattered across the pavement and street. "We'll just have to leave it." "Maybe it'll rain before morning, wash the stains away," said the barbarian wearily. He was too tired to care much one way or the other. "Not at this time of year, it won't," said Allani. "Come on. We'd best get going." He dropped the handful of gravel he'd picked up with the intention of throwing it into the Drakkar's eyes at some apposite moment. It hadn't been needed. The barbarian didn't notice the rattle of the small stones as they fell. Exhaustedly, Thog pulled himself to his feet. It was about a mile further to the Talking Wind. Progress was slow, and not just because Thog was having difficulty in walking at anything faster than a strained hobble: now that they had experienced the consequences of their earlier overconfidence they stuck firmly to the shadows, moving from one place of concealment to the next only when they were utterly sure that they weren't being observed. The journey took them above two hours, and by the time they reached the tavern the thin crescent of the

The Book of the Magnakai // 104 Moon was dipping towards the horizon and pink and green lights were beginning to banish the stars. Berril and her husband, Anwar, were waiting to greet them. There was no trace of sleep in the couple's eyes as they ushered Thog and Allani in through a rear door and directly down the ramshackle stairs to the cellar. While Anwar held a torch, Berril ran her fingers over a bare wall until she found a sensitive spot which she pressed firmly with the side of her narrow fist. Slowly a door swung open on its central vertical pivot. Beyond was the second cellar, lit by candles in glass cases. There were two beds, both made up with sheets and blankets, and without bothering to go through all the formalities of courtesy Thog allowed himself to fall with a crash on top of the larger one. He was bigger than Allani, and in the name of Ishir and numerous other Gods whom he couldn't at the moment rightly remember, he anyway deserved the better bed after what he'd been through. Allani looked at him with a smile. Berril and Anwar suddenly remembered that they should have been treating their noble visitor with the respect his rank merited. Allani accepted their curtsy and bow, but before they could open their mouths he coolly informed them that, if they ever did that again, he'd bang their heads together: they were risking excruciating death by providing him with a safe haven, so that it was he who should be doing the bowing and scraping. The two men struggled to haul off the barbarian's huge boots while Berril, wet cloth in hand, rushed to clear away the gory spoor Thog and Allani had left on the tavern floor and the stairs. Praying that no one would be about to see her at this early hour of the morning, she dashed outside with a mop and retraced their tracks for a couple of hundred yards, dabbing away a number of drops of blood that had fallen from Thog's injured hand; it was lucky that the wound hadn't bled very much. On her return she found that the two men had succeeded in undressing the barbarian and settling him into the bed. Anwar had neatly bound up Thog's ankle in a compress; the bandaged foot stuck out of the bottom of the blankets next to its naked counterpart. "We must plan," she said, "plan for the morrow." "It already is the morrow," said Anwar. "We could do with some rest." "Are you a man?" she said, her hands angrily on her waist. "This isn't the time to start fussing about losing a night's sleep. If His Excel . . . our friend here is to succeed in overthrowing that bastard Kimah, we must move swiftly. Already they must know that Allani is free: soon the Sharnazim will be scouring the city. The quicker we strike, the better our chances. If we delay we may all be dead before the Sun next sets."

The Book of the Magnakai // 105 "Our best plan," said Allani mildly before Anwar could reply, "might be simply to let the city know that I am both alive and free." They looked at him. "There isn't the time to organize things properly through the cells of my supporters," he continued. "Besides, they may have been infiltrated during my absence, for all I know. Much better just to let the citizenry at large know that I'm prepared to lead them against the tyrant." "But what if they fail to heed your call?" said Anwar. "Then," said Allani, "I am clearly not the person they wish to lead them." The innkeeper and his wife accepted this silently, but Allani could see in their eyes – especially Berril's – that any citizen who declined to follow Allani against the hated Kimah was going to have to avoid dark alleys for the rest of his life. "Please leave me alone with my friend for a few moments," said Allani. "I'll join you upstairs shortly." They left, and he sat down on the empty bed. "I owe you my life," he said softly to Thog's motionless form. "'S nothing," said the barbarian thickly. Sleep was clearly not very far away. "Both of you," amended Allani. "Um." "Which of you's speaking to me now?" Allani smiled. "It's confusing when there are two of you in the same body." "You're talking to me. To Thog, I mean." "Well, it's both of you I want to thank. Against that Drakkar . . . You and Jenara together make a warrior worthy to battle alongside Lone Wolf himself." "Er . . ." "May Jenara speak to me for a moment?" "Well, that'd be a bit" – a deep yawn – "difficult." "Why?" "She was knocked out when the Drakkar first hit me over the head. She's only just coming round now, and she's still pretty confused about what's been going on. It was I, Thog the Mighty – alone – who fought and triumphed over that Drakkar. Yeah, Thog the Mighty." Allani looked at him, dumbfounded. The man he'd taken to be an aging, shambling . . . He left quietly. "Didn't think I could do that any more," rumbled Thog to an empty room. Sleep took him. #

The Book of the Magnakai // 106 Lone Wolf and Banedon spent what was left of the night at the house of Tipasa's wife. Once they'd persuaded her to go to bed for the first time since her husband's abduction, they lay down among the debris of the main room and caught what sleep they could. When dawn came, a few hours later, Lone Wolf felt as if someone had been beating his brain with a mallet; infuriatingly, Banedon seemed cheerful and refreshed. The woman's snores filled the house. By tacit agreement the two of them didn't disturb her: Ishir knew how much she needed the sleep. They breakfasted on the dried milk cake and sheep's butter that Lone Wolf had bought in the market the night before: Lone Wolf believed that he had tasted less palatable breakfasts in his time, but he couldn't remember exactly when. They washed the food down with brackish water drawn from a great urn in the back kitchen. Still the old woman slept on. They still didn't want to wake her, but at the same time they didn't feel they could just slip off without saying any form of farewell to her. In the end they compromised by tidying up the rubble in the main room as best they could. The Sun was still low on the horizon as they left Ikaresh. They had been seen by no one except an urchin and his overly affectionate mongrel dog. The morning air in the desert was cold, feeling tart in Lone Wolf's nostrils as he laboured ahead of Banedon through the clinging sand, Tipasa's diary safely cradled in his arms. The morning wind was just beginning to gather strength as the climbed the hillside past the cave of the vaxeler they'd helped; there was no sign of him, and Lone Wolf wondered if he were still in his subterranean stronghold somewhere or if he'd plucked up the courage to return home. It was none of their business what he'd done, of course; they passed the cave without pausing. And then they were in the shadow of the Skyrider. The wind was now gusty enough that, even standing just twenty feet below the craft, they couldn't hear the whine of its propulsion unit. They also had difficulty in attracting the attention of the dwarfs, their shouts and yells being snatched from their lips. In the end Lone Wolf had to start hurling rocks up at the underside of the hull. Once they'd climbed the rope ladder eventually dropped for them they discovered that Nolrim was the only dwarf yet to have awoken. From various of his dark hints they guessed that the supplies of Bor-brew had taken considerable punishment the night before. "Back towards the Dahirs," snapped Banedon, and Lone Wolf was surprised to hear the acerbity in the magician's voice. Nolrim seemed concerned that they'd returned unaccompanied, and there were wrinkles of worry on his small forehead as he watched Banedon wordlessly depart, the diary in his hand, to the quiet of his quarters in the Skyrider's prow.

The Book of the Magnakai // 107 "Didn't you and the Guv find this Tipasa person?" said Nolrim at last to Lone Wolf, who had remained behind on deck for a while. "No," said Lone Wolf gloomily, "and I fear he's probably dead – certainly he'd be better off that way than staying alive too long in the clutches of the Drakkarim." He explained to Nolrim what he and Banedon had discovered as the dwarf prepared the vessel for travel. Nolrim didn't say very much by way of response, just concentrated on his various tasks, but Lone Wolf could tell that the little man was despondent. Like Tipasa's wife, Nolrim was no respecter of book lore; as far as he was concerned, Lone Wolf and Banedon might just as well have returned empty-handed. The Skyrider gave a lurch and the craft began to move higher, turning slowly as it did so. The other dwarfs began to emerge from their dormitory, stretching their arms, yawning, and swearing colourfully to greet the new day. "Where we goin', Nolrim?" yelled Quan. "Back across the desert towards the Dahirs," Nolrim bawled back, obviously glad to have some excuse to stop thinking. "More'n that the Guv didn't say. What's it to you, anyway?" "Mind your lip, you lubber, or I'll overboard you. Bet you we're going back to that oasis and the Guv's fancy lady." "Bet you we're not." "Three crowns on it." "Done." Lone Wolf grinned. He wondered who the "fancy lady" might be. In the end his curiosity got the better of him, and he asked the dwarf working nearest to him, Mirkin. "Dunno," said Mirkin. "Big dame, dressed like a warrior. Funny eyes. Scrummy but tough with it, know what I mean. Could've had Banedon for breakfast any day, I guess, but seemed friendly enough. Move your foot, please." Lone Wolf was stunned. Of course, Banedon had told him that Qinefer had been at the oasis, but it had never occurred to him that the dwarfs might look at the situation and come to the totally wrong conclusion. And the fact that they had done so worried him. The dwarfs, for all their rough boisterousness and rudimentary manners, were perceptive people: it should have been obvious to them that there was no romantic liaison between Banedon and Qinefer, that she was involved with someone else. Himself. Except – was she? Even before he'd left home for Vassagonia he'd been aware that there was a certain distancing happening between them, but at the time he hadn't given it much thought – he'd assumed that it was merely one of those short-lived times when they grew apart only to come back together again with renewed commitment. But now his memory was beginning to throw up at him flashes of the

The Book of the Magnakai // 108 things that she'd been saying to him during that brief encounter in the Imperial Palace – things which he'd been too busy to give any heed to. At the time he'd thought that he was speaking with a chimera, a being sent by the Nadziranim to tempt him from his course. Later he'd learnt that it really had been Qinefer, but only now was he putting together the remembered words with the knowledge of her reality. I've achieved all that I came here to do, she'd said, and now I know the pattern that will lead me out of the palace, out of Barrakeesh . . . out of Vassagonia, in due course. And out of your life. He'd treated her as if she were a babbling child whose precocity had to be humoured. He hadn't really listened when she'd carried on trying to speak to him, to communicate with him: No, we can't. Go on, I said. At every moment in time, each of us is at the centre of a maze, and we've got to make a whole string of different choices that'll lead us out of that maze. If we're lucky. The thing is, there are plenty of different routes you can take to get out of the maze. Lone Wolf, you've chosen the route you want to take: I'm taking a different one. I'm following a different pattern, if you like. That's what it's all about. Patterns. He hadn't understood her – possibly because he hadn't wanted to understand her. But Banedon clearly had. Maybe that was why the dwarfs had sensed a closeness, a bonding, between Qinefer and the magician. You're ditching me, he'd said, but he hadn't really meant it – it was the sort of thing that people said to each other when all they meant was that they were squabbling and that everything would be all right in the morning. You're dressing it up in lots of pretty words, but that's what you're really saying, isn't it? He should have started listening to himself a little harder then. But he'd thought that he knew it all, that he was the master of the situation. He'd come to assume that Qinefer would, in anything of importance, always act in the way that he wanted her to, as if she weren't really an independent human being but instead a projection of his own will – an automaton dancing to whatever music he might play. She'd shrugged. He recalled seeing the grimy green cloth on her shoulder crease. If anyone's doing the ditching, it's you, only you don't know it. Let's just say that circumstances are separating us. We've got different patterns to create. And that was when he should have recognized that what she was saying to him was important. Leaning against the Skyrider's taffrail and watching the orange-red desert sands drift by lazily beneath him, he began to realize that he'd lost Qinefer. He felt he wanted to weep, or to find someone's shoulder he could lean his head against. He guessed he wanted to be a little boy again, taking his grief to the mother about whom he could no longer remember anything. He wanted a balm with which to

The Book of the Magnakai // 109 massage his own heart. He seemed to be having difficulty breathing, as if he'd just run a long distance. He wanted, somehow, to express his demoralizing, emasculating sense of loss. Instead, he went to the prow of the Skyrider to ask Banedon how he was getting along with the task of deciphering Tipasa's journals.

The Book of the Magnakai // 110 CHAPTER SIX The Iron Heel Even from the throne-room of the Imperial Palace Haakon could hear the baying of the crowd. News that Allani was alive and free had spread like wildfire among the citizens of Barrakeesh, and they were out for blood. The further news, disseminated a careful two or three hours later, that the country had temporarily been under the effective rule not even of a Vassagonian – however brutal and dictatorial – but of the denizens of Darkness had spread even more rapidly, because by then there had already built up an army of Allani's dedicated supporters who were only too eager to pass on the information. The powder keg had been primed; with the second wave of rumour the fuse had been lit. Staid merchants who had spent a lifetime ensuring that they did nothing to attract the animus of the forces of government pulled down rusty scimitars from the walls and came out into the street to join ragged workers clutching slings and staves. Women sharpened weapons and soaked strips of cloth in naphtha to make incendiaries; some of them even defied Vassagonian convention and took up arms themselves, to the initial shock but then grudging admiration of their menfolk. Children ran as unofficial couriers through the streets, their shrill voices strewing each most recent scrap of information over the widest possible area. News had even reached the sewage workers deep in the Baga-darooz. The prisoners held chained there were released in a short but horrifically violent subterranean revolution, their Sharnazim guards being slaughtered mercilessly and dismembered before their remains were cast like offal into the slow-moving rivers of sewage. Armed with the guards' weapons, the workers and those of the prisoners hale enough to bear arms came to the surface, blinking at the brightness of the light, to add their malodorous numbers to the remainder of the citizenry. Those Sharnazim who had found themselves isolated in groups of twos and threes were butchered on the spot, their skills in weaponry useless against the sheer ferocity of the mobs that attacked them. Others had fought their way back to the sanctuary of the palace walls with difficulty; casualties had been high and the mobs were giving no quarter. There was smoke in the air above the city, and rumour had it that some of that smoke came from pyres. And now the mobs were at the palace gates. Haakon, Lord of Aarnak and Archlord of Darkness, sitting uncomfortably on a golden throne that had been designed for beings much smaller than himself, drummed his clawed fingers on its arm.

The Book of the Magnakai // 111 He was not displeased by the turn of events. With the destruction of the Birthplace, it had become clear to him that his operation in Vassagonia was at an end. Besides, now that the Book of the Magnakai was almost within his grasp, there was little need to maintain it. The civil turmoil would provide a perfect smokescreen to shroud his departure from Barrakeesh to the Tomb of the Majhan; from there he could fly by Zlanbeast or Kraan to the Darklands. The spawn and the Drakkarim could be left in Vassagonia to be mopped up by the natives. All the loose ends of the operation would thereby be neatly tied off, without his having to raise a finger. Who ruled Vassagonia was no longer a subject for Haakon's concern. In a few years now Darkness would swamp all of Magnamund, so it mattered not a whit to him which Zakhan it was who would be drowned in the inexorable spate of Evil. It might as well be this fool Allani as anyone else. Haakon smiled a macabre smile. Things were working out almost too perfectly. The crowds wanted a sacrifice, and he even had a sacrifice lined up to be given to them. There was a pounding at the great door of beaten gold. The two Drakkarim sentries to either side of it sprang to attention. With a glance Haakon indicated that they should open it. A single Drakkar appeared, the flashes on his death-mask proclaiming his seniority as, swirling his cape easily about him, he walked with confident arrogance to stand before his master. "The preparations are complete, sire," he said, bowing deeply. "We await only your command." "It is good," said Haakon. "Stay your hands for another hour yet. Wait until noon, when the Sun will be at its highest and the wrath of the scum at its greatest. He will not die too soon?" "Night will fall before he screams his last," assured the Drakkar. "If not, the executioner shall take his place." Aye, and you shall be beside the executioner, thought Haakon, but his face remained impassive. "Do not forget that none of my creatures are to be visible," he said. "The mob must see that Kimah is dying at the hands of his fellow Vassagonians." "It shall be so, sire." "Has he been told yet of his fate?" said the Darklord. "Not yet, sire. We were waiting for your command." "Then tell him now. Describe it to him in detail, so that he is forewarned of every last scintilla of pain that he will endure. I want him to be a broken man even before he sees his gibbet." He thought for a second, then added: "Better still, let the executioner himself be charged with informing Kimah of what awaits him. The executioner will do so with an even greater love and skill than I myself would be able to command. Take Kimah to a place where he can hear the bellowing of the mob, so that he knows what will

The Book of the Magnakai // 112 be the last sounds he hears as he dies humiliated by those he sought to rule." "He may be driven mad," said the Drakkar cautiously. "If he is mad before his execution begins, he will not appreciate the exquisiteness of his torment." "Never let it be said that I am unmerciful," said the Darklord, beginning to laugh. His chest heaved as if there were a wild creature locked inside it, trying to escape. "If his wits have gone from him, his passing will be that much the easier for him." The Drakkar obediently joined in with his master's laughter, as did the sentries. "Now be about your duties," said Haakon after a while, his face suddenly scowling. Again the Drakkar bowed respectfully. He retreated to the door and passed between the sentries without a sideways glance. However, there were many doubts in his mind as he strode along the broad and sumptuously decorated corridor in the direction of the entrance to the dungeon complex. Although he would obey Haakon's commands until the last breath fled from his body, he was suspicious of the Darklord's plans. The death of Kimah, no matter how agonizing and protracted, would satisfy the crowds for but a few hours – a couple of days at best. Then they would be seeking the extinction also of all of those who had come to their country by means of the Birthplace. Yet Haakon had made no mention of contingency plans to evacuate the Helghast, Giaks and other spawn he had brought here; more important, he had said nothing about the future of the Drakkarim, specifically the officer himself. The Drakkar shrugged as he walked, a mannerism that would have betrayed to any of his fellows that might have been watching that he was very worried indeed. Not for his own future – he had already written himself off as a dead man – but for Haakon's, and for the forces of Evil that Haakon represented in this world. The Drakkar had fought under Zagarna, and remembered how that Archlord, too, had had triumph almost within his grasp. At the last moment Zagarna had been destroyed, his grin of satisfaction still fading on his lips. Haakon was showing the same over-confidence that Zagarna had during his final hours. The Drakkar had a horrible feeling that history was about to repeat itself. He shrugged again, and this time the gesture was one of dismissal. There was nothing he could do to alter the situation. If he voiced his caution to the Darklord, Haakon would simply strike him down. It wasn't the officer's responsibility. His pace quickened. He had been given his orders, and he must obey them with the utmost despatch. He didn't notice the money-spider that was riding on his shoulder.

The Book of the Magnakai // 113 Back in the throne-room, Haakon, too, was having unaccustomed doubts. He'd been wrong to think that everything was going so perfectly, he mused: there were still some very large and very irritating flies in the ointment. The Kai whelp was still alive and at large, having somehow evaded the troop of Kraan and Drakkarim that Haakon had sent to exterminate him. The black woman who had destroyed the Birthplace was still free, and he had no idea where she might have gone to. The sorcerer who had penetrated the dungeons with such ridiculous ease . . . Was it he who had done so again, and released the Allani person? Right now Haakon wanted all of their heads on a platter. He'd even have settled for the head of the big barbarian who'd followed the sorcerer around like a faithful hound. But the lust for vengeance wasn't all that nagged him. Lone Wolf had ruined the schemes of the forces of Darkness before; while he lived there was no guarantee that he might not succeed in doing so again. Like his officer, Haakon was remembering what had befallen Zagarna. The sorcerer, too, with his strange and strangely powerful abilities – Haakon distrusted magic, even that of his own Nadziranim, and his distrust was born of fear. He would gladly have crushed the sorcerer between his two great hands, so that the magic fled from his body at the same as did his life. And the woman. In a way it was she who frightened Haakon most of all. The other two he could, in a way, comprehend: they had powers which, although he might not understand them, were at least in a way familiar to him. The woman was something new in his experience. She had seemed to make no effort whatsoever to avoid the Sharnazim or any of the spawn of Darkness who had sought her, and yet she had walked quite freely from the Birthplace to the outside of Barrakeesh and beyond without anyone seeming to be able to lay a finger on her. Yes, it was the woman who worried him most . . . And then the Darklord shook his great head like a baited bear, furious with himself. He was letting trivia cloud his vision. In a few short hours the Book of the Magnakai would be his, and soon thereafter it would be dust. Deprived of the book, never again would the Order of the Kai re-emerge from those ashes to thwart the will of Naar's legions as they ground the Lastlands under their iron heels. No one could stop him now – now that the only mortal who might have led Lone Wolf to the book was safely within their clutches. Haakon's lip curled as he recalled the manner of Tipasa's torment. The old man had held out a long time – far longer than the Drakkarim had believed possible – but at last, broken and bleeding, he had given them the information that they needed. The delay had infuriated the Darklord – even more so when he had come to realize that it had earned Tipasa the reluctant respect of the very Drakkarim who had been torturing him. Haakon had wished to have tormented further, so that the man received the

The Book of the Magnakai // 114 lingering death he deserved, but had sensed the Drakkarim's unwillingness. Now Tipasa was in an underground cell near the Tomb of the Majhan; his death would not be long delayed. In the mean time Haakon had been forced to vent his fury on three of the Sharnazim who had had the misfortune to be near at hand. None of the sentries at the gates had commented on the fact that, briefly, there had been an unusually generous proportion of meat in their rations. Time was passing. Haakon stood up and stamped out of the throne-room, the two Drakkarim guards falling in automatically behind him. He led them up a flight of stairs to a vast room that had once been the Zakhan's ceremonial bedchamber, used by the Zakhans for generations back to initiate their often unwilling brides before banishing the hapless women to the mediocrity of the harem. The room was high and airy and spotlessly clean, yet somehow it had about it a sweet, cloying stench of corruption. Haakon didn't that. He had come here solely because the chamber had a vast window, stretching from floor to ceiling, that would give him a clear view of the machineries of torture the executioner would employ upon the body of Zakhan Kimah. The Darklord looked out and grunted with satisfaction. High over the palace walls towered a gigantic edifice, at the top of which was a platform that could be clearly seen from anywhere in the central part of Barrakeesh. Ladders led up the gantry from the ground to this platform, which was laden with bizarre mechanical devices; their purposes could only be guessed at, but it was obvious even at a casual glance that those purposes must be obscene. There were gleaming knives and pinions, sullen coils of rope and braziers already burning, whips with metal-studded lashes . . . The death of Kimah would be more than hideous enough to sate the bloodlust of the masses. Temporarily. Just long enough for Haakon to be able to leave this scrubby little human palace with its tawdry trappings of splendour. He would watch for an hour or two and then, as the sadism reached its peak and the crowds were at their most absorbed, slip away on the back of his Imperial Zlanbeast across the Dahir Mountains to the seclusion of the oasis of Bal-loftan and, beyond it, the Tomb of the Majhan. Nothing could stop him now. He smiled in his invincibility. Nothing. Nothing at all. # Banedon was bent over a cramped writing-desk, poring over the book and a couple of star-charts that he had unrolled; two candles

The Book of the Magnakai // 115 on the desk added to the light coming in through the small and grimy window. He barely looked up when Lone Wolf entered, just waved him in the general direction of an unmade bunk. Lone Wolf sat down on it, feeling very lonely indeed. He looked around him at the small and incredibly untidy living-quarters. Somehow he'd expected to see a litter of skulls, yellowed antique grimoires, complicated gold sigils, phallocentric paintings, bubbling alembics and retorts of burnished copper, but instead the cabin was filled with shelves of books, piles of scrolls and curious instruments cast from metal and bearing arrays of lenses and mirrors; these last he guessed must be products of the sophisticated Borian technology of which he'd already seen evidence. Despite the mess, the place looked astonishingly businesslike: it seemed to be more of a laboratory than a magician's lair. Banedon was muttering and mumbling to himself as he worked, sometimes chewing the end of his quill pen ruminatively and other times darting it forward to scribble frenetically on one of the sheets of blank paper he had piled at his elbow. The cabin was small enough for Lone Wolf to be able to lean forward and see that Banedon's scribblings consisted of mathematical calculation interspersed with occasional rough diagrams. Lone Wolf recognized the shapes of some of the constellations, but they were almost wholly obliterated by additional construction lines that Banedon had drawn to indicate angles of declination, Right Ascension (EDITOR PLEASE NOTE: CAP "A" AND "R" CORRECT) and so on. Lone Wolf was aware that Banedon was concentrating so deeply that he wouldn't have noticed an explosion going off in the cabin, but nevertheless he remained respectfully silent. He picked up a book he found lying on the floor and began to leaf through it, not really reading the words as they floated in front of his eyes. "Sorry to be taking so long over this," muttered Banedon an hour or so later, not looking up. "I've managed to crack the code, but I haven't really got to the guts of it yet." "Do you think you'll be able to?" "Given a couple of months and twice as much luck as I could expect, yes. But I don't need to. I can derive the information we need from it without having to go through all that. Trouble is, I'm having to use an iterative process – trial and error – and that always takes time. I might be another four or five hours, or I might be lucky and get there in the next five minutes. I can't guess which." He bent back to his labours, and Lone Wolf carried on looking sightlessly at the book. Qinefer was gone.

The Book of the Magnakai // 116 That was the only thing he could think about, the only thing that had any meaning for him. If it weren't for the fact that Banedon and the dwarfs were there, and that he was cooped up aboard the Skyrider without any way of leaving – if it weren't for the fact that he was committed he'd have quite happily abandoned his quest and the Book of the Magnakai, and left Magnamund to whatever fortune might bring it. He smiled ironically. On the scale of reality, his loss was an infinitesimal triviality in comparison with the fate of the world, and yet right at the moment it seemed to him by far the more important of the two. Although Banedon was still scratching his calculations on the rough paper as industriously as before, he had become aware of Lone Wolf's thoughts – and perturbed by them. The psychic contact alone couldn't tell him exactly what it was that had thrown Lone Wolf's mind into such turmoil but, from the mixture of grief and a childlike surprise at a seemingly arbitrary cruelty of fate, together with thoughts coloured by loss, despondency and frustration, Banedon had little difficulty in guessing what was going on. At last Lone Wolf, who could be remarkably insensitive at times, was beginning to recognize what his own lack of empathy at a crucial moment had brought upon him. This worried Banedon. If the calculations he was pursuing did indeed lead them to the Tomb of the Majhan, and if they encountered the minions of the Darklord there, Lone Wolf would need to be at the peak of his abilities if they were to stand the remotest chance of survival – let alone success. A Lone Wolf nursing a battered heart and a bruised ego would be less an advantage than a liability. Distracted, he might easily fail them at the very moment when they most needed his abilities. After considering the matter for some time, while still repeating the algorithmic process he'd devised, he did something that he'd vowed to himself he'd never do. Pretending merely to be ridding his hand of writers' cramp, Banedon flexed his fingers in a complicated routine and reached out with his psyche to feel the tangled knot of thoughts that symbolized Lone Wolf's mind; he saw it as a turbulent ball made up of many tightly wound strands. The strands were coloured in discordant, clashing hues – muddy greens, jagged reds, a bilious pink – and in places they were shearing away from the main nexus to go drifting and dissolving off into the void between minds. Banedon's own consciousness stretched itself around this ball, capturing further escaping fragments of the strands. The psychic cup that his mind formed shrank around the ball, forming a thin, seamless skin that enclosed it completely. Then Banedon sent colours from his own mind into this thin sheath, so that they ran all over its surface like the gleaming sheens on an oily puddle. Now the globe of Lone Wolf's thoughts was becoming an object of

The Book of the Magnakai // 117 splendour, its radiance illuminating the blackness of the mental void surrounding it. Banedon relaxed guiltily. The whole operation had taken only the tiniest fraction of a second. He had tampered with the mind of another human being without that person's prior consent or even his knowledge. Had it been a foe he would have had no compunction – but Lone Wolf was far from a foe. The sweat on his forehead was born not from his mental exertions but from his shame. He redoubled his mathematical efforts. Lone Wolf looked up, startled. Something had changed – that much he knew – but he couldn't tell what it was. He looked at Banedon, but Banedon hadn't moved: he was still scribbling away, occasionally whispering the numbers to himself under his breath. The note of the Skyrider's propulsion was keeping a steady, unperturbed pitch. Through the window, the noonday sky was a cloudless blue. Yet Lone Wolf was certain that something had changed . . . He shrugged his shoulders. His fatigue was making him a prey to fancies. He looked back at the book in his hands. The words that had seemed so drab and meaningless were now bright beacons on the page. He had the sense that some grey misty curtain had been coming between them and his eyes before, but he couldn't remember too much of what that had felt like. He began to read avidly. # Thog screamed. Allani had been sitting on the other bed, eyes gazing into nowhere, thinking his own thoughts as the giant barbarian slumbered noisily. The scream thrust him back into full alertness. He leapt to his feet and steeped over to Thog's bed. The broad face was covered in sweat, and the broad shoulders were twisting as if they were trying to struggle out of the grasp of some huge intangible fist. Thog's eyes were closed, but Allani could see frantic movement under the lids. His arms hanging helplessly by his sides, Allani was perplexed as to what he should do. He didn't want to leave his friend – and his lover – locked in the grip of nightmare, yet he suspected that it might be dangerous to wake the barbarian at the moment: the shock might drive Thog into a coma, so far as Allani knew. He felt utterly impotent, watching the great body floundering in obvious torment and unable to do anything that might help. Thog screamed again, and this time his blue eyes opened. His hands came up to his face protectively, as if he thought Allani were about to attack him.

The Book of the Magnakai // 118 "Gently, there. Gently," said the Vassagonian soothingly. The words seemed imbecilic to him as soon as he'd spoken them; he imagined them still hanging there in the air, mocking and jeering at him. But his tone of voice had had the required effect. Slowly and with apparent reluctance Thog pulled his substantial hands away from his face. His eyes darted nervously towards the closed door, at the torch in its sconce and around the blank walls; finally he squinted up at Allani. The distrust faded slowly from his gaze. "You've had a nightmare," said Allani, putting his cool palm gently on his friend's wet forehead. Detachedly, he noticed for the first time that the barbarian was balding; his battered helmet must be worn for reasons of vanity as well as for protection. "Just a lousy dream. It's all right now, you're safe here in the cellars under the Talking Wind." "It wasn't just a bad dream," said Thog, his voice thick with remembered loathing. Allani smiled. "That's the way it always seems when you've just woken up from a nightmare," he babbled cheerfully, not much concerned with what he was saying, his aim only to fill up the room's vacant space with words until Thog or Jenara or both of them had fully emerged from their night terror. "It all seems so vivid that you think it must have been that evil spirits were invading your mind, trying to possess you." "Have you quite finished?" By the coolness of the tone Allani realized that it was Jenara's mind that was speaking to him. "Yes." Humbly. "Then stop patronizing me and listen to what I'm telling you. It was not a bad dream that affected me so much. While Thog has been sleeping the sleep he so richly deserved, I've been sending myself wandering through the palace, spying on the doings of the creatures of Darkness." "What did you learn?" Allani sat down on the edge of the bed and, without thinking, picked up one of Thog's hands and fondled it reassuringly. "I spent much of my time as a money-spider – so small that no one ever noticed me. It's a horrific life, being a money-spider, incidentally. You have to . . . no, that's by the by. I'll tell you that part of it another day. I discovered much more important things than that." Briefly Jenara recounted the details of Haakon's conversation with the Drakkarim officer. Allani listened intently, his legs crossed, his elbow on his knee, his chin cupped in the palm of his hand. At the end of her account he swore loudly. "You'd think they'd learn, wouldn't you?" he said bitterly. "What do you mean?" said Jenara. "Who?"

The Book of the Magnakai // 119 "The Drakkarim," replied Allani. "It must be plain as a pikestaff to them that Haakon's planning to skip out of the country leaving them to bear the consequences. The Darklords have done the same sort of thing over and over again to the Drakkarim for thousands of years, ever since their unholy alliance was formed, and yet still the Drakkarim obey their every whim! You'd think that, just once, enough of them would sit back and think to themselves, `We're not getting very much out of this', and dump the Darklords and all their doings as swiftly as humanly possible. I just don't understand it. Why do they keep throwing away their lives in the service of masters who're about as trustworthy as a storgh in heat?" "Fear?" "Fear of what? The Darklords couldn't do anything worse to them than what happens to them anyway." "Hatred?" "Simple, dumb hatred of any creature that might possess attributes like sincerity or honesty or kindness or the capacity to love and create. Think of what you'd feel like if you lacked all those things. You'd be jealous, wouldn't you? Except you wouldn't be able to admit to yourself that you were jealous, so you'd dress it up in your mind as hatred." "Maybe so." He looked at his hands. "What else did you learn?" A haunted look crossed Thog's wide face. His lips grew thinner, stretched across his teeth. "I went on the Drakkar's shoulder down into the dungeons, to the cell where they're holding Kimah. He's not taking his captivity too well – he's torn off half his fingernails clawing at the door, and the room stinks of shit and piss. He was coping with it all right last night, but since then they've told him that he's going to die today." Thog sat up in bed and buried his face in his trembling hands. "They're going to execute him?" said Allani. "I can't say that the prospect places any heavy burden on my heart. Even before he came to the throne, Kimah was responsible for untold numbers of vile deaths." "Yes, but . . ." "He deserves to die," said Allani with finality. "No human being, however evil his soul, deserves to die the way they plan to kill Kimah," said Jenara, enunciating each word with quiet deliberation. In Thog's slurred voice, the effect was eerie. Allani was startled out of the composed ruthlessness he'd settled himself into. "No one could match the torments to which Kimah has subjected some of his victims," he countered, but his voice was hesitant. Jenara was not weak-stomached: the Drakkarim must have something especially unpleasant in mind for the Zakhan.

The Book of the Magnakai // 120 "Besides, it makes sense for them to give him a pretty blood-curdling public execution. It'll keep the crowds happy – they want to see him dead, and they want to see him die, too." "They led him out of his cell," Jenara continued in a broken voice, "and up to one of the topmost rooms of the palace. They showed him the edifice they've built up for the killing of him. Just to look at it is to foul one's mind." "It would be impossible to foul Kimah's mind," muttered Allani, but so softly that the sound didn't carry to Thog's ears. "There they introduced him to the . . . to the creature that's going to do the killing. It's a Vassagonian – a mindless thug who's served Kimah himself as executioner these past few days." Now Jenara was speaking as if indeed she were reliving a nightmare. "Poetic justice," breathed Allani soundlessly. "There's no intelligence in the man's eyes, just an infinite cruelty. He wears no mask – he hasn't the wit to recognize he should feel shame for his bestial employment." There were tears on the coarse, creased cheeks. "The only thing he can feel love for are the tools of his trade – the knives, the branding iron, the peelers, the cutters, the slicers, the scourges . . . and the insects." Allani sat upright, perplexed. "Insects?" "Yes. They've brought some insects from the desert that feed on carrion. Jiroz, the things are called. The insects eat into the flesh of dead animals, burrowing their way deep into the corpse until they lay their eggs. Within three hours the eggs hatch, and the larvae start to eat away at the flesh from the inside. By the time they reach the surface they're the size of a marble – far larger than the adult insect." Allani frowned. "But how could this affect the torture. If they feed Kimah's corpse to the insects, he'll feel nothing of it." "Don't you see?" Thog's great fist pounded down heavily into the bedclothes. "The jiroz don't care if the flesh they prey upon is living or dead! Normally they feed only on carrion because living animals slap them away before they get a chance to start boring into the skin. Kimah isn't going to be given that option." Allani, who had seen many foul things during his career, was beginning to look green. "When he's trussed up like a fowl for the pot they're going to cram jiroz into his mouth and his ears and his private parts," Jenara went on, her voice sobbing. "Worst of all, they're going to peel away his eyelids and cover his eyes with the loathsome creature. So all through whatever other torments they inflict upon his body, he's going to be suffering the agonies of being slowly devoured from within by a thousand eager mouths. It'll be as if they were sticking red-hot needles into his eyes . . . for hour after hour after hour!" Allani was now feeling physically sick.

The Book of the Magnakai // 121 "It'll be too much for the crowds," he said stoically. "The whole thing will backfire on the forces of Darkness." "No," said Jenara gloomily. "No, it won't be too cruel for the crowds to stomach. Any individual among them would be so revolted that such a thing could be done to a human being – even to Kimah – that they'd fight to stop it happening. But your supporters in the streets of Barrakeesh aren't a collection of individuals any longer, Allani. They're a mob, and there's no cruelty too vile for a mob to be repelled. They'll be baying to the executioner to increase the pain." "Surely not," said Allani, but he knew she was right. "We've got to do something," said Jenara after a while. "There's nothing we can do." "We must save Kimah," she stressed. "Save him? Save that tyrant? Have you gone out of your head, woman?" "Not save his life, Allani," she said urgently. "I agree with you, he has no right to live to see another sunrise. But we can save him from that death. Don't you see? We have to. Would you ever be able to sleep in the comfort of your palace if you were haunted by the knowledge that your reign had been inaugurated by such an act of barbarism? Would you? Would you really?" Thog's face was inches from Allani's now, the bright blue eyes drilling into his own. "I don't think that there's anything I can do to stop it," he said, aware as he spoke them of the prissiness of the words. "Then I must do it on my own," hissed Jenara. "You? A woman on her own? Don't be so . . ." "Yes. Me. A woman on my own!" "Not on your own!" It was a new voice speaking, and Allani's instant reaction was to glance round to see who had crept into the room without his noticing. Then he realized that the voice was Thog's. The barbarian was vying with Jenara for the use of his mouth. "I, Thog the Mighty, I will be with you, Jenara." He climbed to his feet, pushing Allani brusquely aside. He looked around for his helmet, his weaponry and his boots. "Let it be heard by all who would hear. Thog would rather give up his own life than let another suffer such a death." A vast fist pinched the cloth of the compress and ripped it in a single movement from Thog's foot. The damp bandage was hurled away with such force and fury that it stuck to the wall. "Get out of my way, small fry!" Allani's back crashed against the wall next to the compress. He slid down until he was sitting dazedly on the floor. Thog had succeeded in pulling on one boot, but his swollen ankle was making it impossible for him to fit his foot into the other.

The Book of the Magnakai // 122 "No matter," he rumbled to Allani, "a warrior barefoot is as much a warrior as one in the finest boots the cobbler can cobble, if you understand me." Contemptuously the big man kicked off his other boot. "Y – yes," said Allani uncertainly. Thog noisily buckled his belt around his waist, the weapons ringing and jangling like a carillon played by a madman. His eyes still holding Allani's, he lifted his great helmet and lowered it with ritual solemnity down onto his head. He gestured towards the cloud of flies that had returned to encircle his face. "See? Even these creatures have more courage than you!" he boomed. Allani could find no words. He was no longer sure which of the two was speaking to him – Jenara or Thog himself. In that moment, both of them held the same contempt towards him. "Thog the Mighty will save the Zakhan scum!" bellowed the barbarian at the top of his voice. In the enclosed space the effect was deafening. Even Thog looked discomfited. "Woe betide any man or woman who tries to stop me," he added in lower tones. "And that includes even you, Allani." The lock of the secret door was shattered by a single punch. The door spun on its pivot like a top for a few seconds until Thog grew impatient of waiting and wrenched the pivot clear of its moorings, throwing the door ahead of him as if it were a sheet of waste paper found blowing down the street. Allani could hear the big man limping up the wooden stairs to the ground floor, and then a brief burst of confused shouting before a colossal smashing told him that Thog had just left the tavern through its main door. Thog was going to his death – Allani was convinced of that. What would happen to Jenara in that moment, Allani couldn't guess. There was a strange lethargy creeping through him, so that he couldn't stir any emotion even in the contemplation of the death of the one he loved more than he had ever loved anyone before. The shock of having his own inadequacies as a human being displayed so starkly before him by a man whose brains were of mud had split Allani's own consciousness into a million isolated shards that seemed to be hiding away in the darkest corners and the furthest extremities of his body. And then, with what felt like an infinite slowness, the shards began to creep together, to coalesce, and to start inching their way back towards the centre of him. Towards him. Half an hour later he stood up. There was a new fire in his eyes and a new determination in his movements. He would have to move quickly if he were going to save Thog. There was only one way he could think of. He must take the risk, even though his premature action might mean his own death.

The Book of the Magnakai // 123 He must proclaim himself. # Thog reached the great square outside the main gate of the Imperial Palace just as they were leading Kimah out onto the elevated platform. A huge cheer went up from the mob as two burly Sharnazim wrestled the slight, struggling figure of the Zakhan to a wooden X-shaped structure. Within moments Kimah's limbs were roped to the beams, his regal garments stripped from him so that he was clad only in a loincloth. The Sharnazim left him there alone on the platform, retreating down a ladder and out of sight behind the palace wall. Now there was a deathly stillness. Thog took advantage of it to push his way through the press of bodies, forcing his way ruthlessly towards the palace. A few Barrakeeshians started to protest but then, seeing the size of the aggressor and the grimness written into every line of his face, discreetly held their peace. Only one citizen, a man of bulk almost equal to that of the barbarian, dared to take his objection further; he was to wake up in hospital three days later. Near the front of the throng Thog came across a man carrying a crossbow that had been appropriated from the remains of one of the few Drakkarim to have been caught in the streets that morning. "May I borrow your crossbow?" said the barbarian courteously. "Huh!" snorted the Vassagonian, a plump greengrocer who had sniffed the glories of war for the first time that morning. Clearly it was his crossbow now, and he intended to keep a-hold of it. "Thank you," said Thog with an amiable grin, dislocating the greengrocer's shoulder as he took the weapon. The man's scream of pain was drowned by an even louder ululation from above. The executioner had emerged onto the platform, and Kimah was pulling against his mercilessly tight bonds, uselessly struggling to get away from the man. The executioner gave him a stupid leer, then bowed towards the crowd in a travesty of a popular actor acknowledging the adulation of his delighted audience. The trouble is, thought Jenara, they're just that – a delighted audience. They're a mob, Thog responded. Mobs are like that. They're not people any more. He was cranking the handle of the crossbow, drawing back the string against the resistance of the stout metal crosspiece. The greengrocer's pockets had yielded three bolts for the weapon, and Thog was hoping that three would be enough. It had been many years since last he'd fired one of these devices, and he was worried that he might have lost the art. He tried to reassure

The Book of the Magnakai // 124 himself with memories of how he'd defeated that Drakkar the night before. The crowd was becoming raucous again. The executioner had lovingly drawn a long, curved pointed knife from the array set up next to the Zakhan. He was showing to Kimah, running his thumb along its razor-sharp edge to draw a hair-thin line of blood. Thog pushed his way back through the mob. In his eagerness, he'd come too close in under the shadow of the wall to be able to get a clear line of sight to the events unfolding on the platform. He passed the greengrocer once again and, without pausing, almost absent-mindedly jerked the man's arm back into its socket again. The greengrocer's howling stopped in a surprised gargle. Now the executioner was holding the knife up on high, turning its blade this way and that so that it caught the Sun, sending blinding rays of light to every corner of the square. The cheering mounted higher and higher. Good luck, Thog, thought Jenara as the big man planted his feet wide apart for stability and rested his elbow on the shoulder of a citizen in front of him. The citizen was so enthralled by the prospect of the cruelty he was about to witness that he didn't notice the intrusion. I'll need it, thought Thog glumly. He steadied his weapon as best he could, and, squinting down the shaft, slowly squeezed the trigger. Someone jogged his arm, and the bolt flew wide. It clattered against the palace wall some twenty yards to the right of the platform and a good fifteen feet below the top. No one noticed. A string of curses filled Thog's mind. He blinked. He wouldn't have believed Jenara to be capable of language like that. The executioner was revelling in the cheers and in the way that he was protracting Kimah's mental torment. He put the knife back in its rack and plucked a branding-iron from one of the braziers. The metal tip was red hot, and smoked even in the empty air. The executioner waved it tauntingly under Kimah's nose, and the Zakhan screamed once again. Spittle was drooling from his mouth down onto his naked chest. Thog had finished rewinding the crossbow. Another shot from here? he asked Jenara. I don't see any alternative, she said crisply. I'll do my best to make sure that no one jostles you for the next minute or two. Thog felt her mind moving into complexities of pattern that were incomprehensible to him, and knew that she was forming a spell. An invisible barrier seemed to form around him and the man whose shoulder he was using as an arm-rest, so that he had a small patch of space clear on all sides. This time he steadied his aim with painstaking care.

The Book of the Magnakai // 125 I can think of an alternative, he was musing, but I don't like it at all. Jenara was too engrossed in the magical tapestry she was maintaining to hear his thought. He squeezed the trigger with a fabulous gentleness. This time his aim was true, but again the bolt rattled harmlessly against the stones of the palace wall some fifteen feet beneath the top. The range is too great, Thog thought urgently. The weapon just isn't capable of it. Again Jenara cursed. It looks as if we're going to have to go for my alternative, thought Thog glumly. Assuming one of these rats has what I need for it. Jenara's thoughts in his mind were a confusion. Clearly she didn't understand his meaning. He decided not to enlighten her – she would only raise a storm of protest, and he had enough on his mind without that. If I die, he thought furiously as he pushed his way forward through the crowd once again, you'll be all right, won't you? You'll be able to flee back to wherever it is you've left your body this time, won't you? The smell of massed sweat and excitement was almost dizzying. Yes, she thought, still perplexed by what he was doing. But you're not going to die, are you, Thog? If I were a gambler . . . Thog! Don't be a fool! He's not worth . . . No one deserves what they're planning to do to him. I'd rather be dead than let it happen. Now shut up and let me concentrate. At last Thog found what he wanted wrapped around the shoulders of one of the citizens close under the gantry – a grappling iron and a goodly length of rope. The man had come prepared to be one of the advance guard that scaled the palace walls, but he and the others were waiting to see the Zakhan die before they mounted their assault. He was reluctant to give up the equipment until Thog remarked that, in that case, the only way he could see of getting it from him was to pull his head off. The citizen took one look at Thog's vastness and realized the threat was not quite as empty as it might have seemed. Meekly he surrendered the rope and the hooked iron. The crowd were chanting now. They'd tired of the trick with the branding-iron: what they wanted was the sight of blood, of pain being inflicted. Fortunately the executioner hadn't realized this: like a second-rate tumbler he was milking his audience for applause long after they'd become impatient with him. Thog thanked Ishir for giving the man such a wealth of stupidity. He cranked up the crossbow for the third time, his wrist aching as he worked. I guess I've come to know you better than I've ever known anyone before, he was thinking. I may not get time later, so take it from the . . . er

The Book of the Magnakai // 126 . . . lips of Thog the Mighty that it's been good having you living inside me, all these times. Thog! What in the name of the Dark God himself is it that you're planning to do? I'd rather not even think about it myself, so I'm blasted if I'm going to let you start thinking about it. Thog! Any time you meet up with someone who's too much of a knucklehead to realize that you're an all-right person, tell 'em that Thog the Mighty himself gave you an all-round thumbs-up. If that doesn't convince 'em, try the coup de la main force et incompréhension. I've found it's pretty effective at convincing people, myself. You'd be welcome to have my morningstar if you wanted, but I don't think you'd be able to lift it. Maybe you'd be best to get one made specially – a sort of lighter, ladies' model. What are you going to do, you idiot? Just watch. # The Archlord Haakon was already tiring of the spectacle. His two Drakkarim guards were leaning forwards avidly towards the window of the bedchamber, eager for the bloodletting to begin. He regarded them with contempt: had they ever been to Helgedad they'd have realized how petty were the torments to which the Zakhan was going to be subjected. On impulse, he stood up and grasped each of them by the neck in his steel-strong hands. Before they realized what was happening, he'd thrown the two of them straight forward through the window. The glass shattered into a million pieces as the Drakkarim shot through it. Their screams died suddenly a couple of seconds later. The Darklord turned away. He crossed the bedchamber and threw open the door. There was no one visible in the corridor outside. His footsteps echoing, he tramped swiftly in the direction of the stables where his own Imperial Zlanbeast was kept. On the way he gathered about him several Helghast, which he instructed to slaughter any Drakkarim or Vassagonians they should encounter. Their progress through the palace was marked by a trail of contorted corpses. At last they were among the musty smells and rustling movements of the stables; the Kraan were chirruping to each other softly, impatient for the freedom of the air. His Zlanbeast was waiting more quietly, eying him with a look of cold welcome. Minutes later they were in the open. Haakon mounted his Zlanbeast, and the Helghast followed his example, climbing astride Kraan. A few curt words of command instructed the remaining Kraan to accompany the others to their destination beyond the Dahir Mountains.

The Book of the Magnakai // 127 The creatures of Darkness spiralled into the air, looping and fluttering as they climbed. No one in the crowd outside the palace saw them: the eyes of the mob were focused on the scaffold where their Zakhan was to meet his doom. The Archlord smiled a final chilly smile at the spectacle, and spurred his Zlanbeast towards the south, towards the oasis of Bal-loftan. # Thog spun the grappling-iron until the rope thrummed in the air. He'd cleared a vacant space by the use of sheer brute force. Few of the people around him were paying him any attention. Above, the executioner had at last realized that the mob wanted more than mere appetizers: they were bellowing for the cruelty proper to begin. He had drawn the long curved knife from its rack again, and was indicating that he was about to use it to cut away Kimah's eyelids. The Zakhan's wits had fled from him some while ago, but the crowd were too far away to see the madness in the pits of his eyes. The executioner had second thoughts. He replaced the knife, and the crowd booed its displeasure. Now he opened a box and brought forth a fistful of silvery, wriggling insects. He held the jiroz high above his head so that the mob could see what he was holding. As the implications began to sink in, the boos slowly changed into yells of enthusiasm. The executioner forced Kimah's jaws open and rammed the knot of insects into his mouth. The crowd was ecstatic. With a final shoulder-jerking wrench Thog hurled the grappling iron almost directly upwards. The rope at his feet uncoiled swiftly as the heavy hook climbed. For a moment he thought, as he peered towards the sky, that his throw had fallen short. His heart sank. His shoulder ached and he knew that he'd never be able to repeat the feat. But then the hook caught. He tugged on the rope with savage force to make sure that the hold was secure. It was. You could help me, Jenara, by doing a very considerable deal of praying, he thought. I'm not especially fussy about which Gods you pick on, but make 'em effective ones, eh? Her thoughts in his mind were a mixture of laughter and tears. You're a fool, you know that? A blind, blithering, blathering, bumbling oaf of a fool, Thog. You've got a natural magic that's more powerful than anything I've ever managed to learn. If anyone can get out of this alive, we can. I'll be doing your praying, all right, but my magic will be with you as well. That's nice of you. Can you stop my feet sweating?

The Book of the Magnakai // 128 Why, yes, I suppose I . . . now? Yes. I don't want them slippery. Oh. I see. All right. Consider it done. Immediately Thog's naked feet felt as if they had just been powdered with dry chalk-dust. Whether I succeed or fail, he thought as he took the rope in his powerful hands, I want you to make sure you tell my grandchildren of the last great deed of Thog the Mighty. He leapt so that the soles of his feet were flat against the rough wall and about a yard apart. His bruised ankle throbbed in protest, but he ignored it. His right shoulder began to join in the chorus, but he ignored it, too. It was a bit more difficult to ignore the pain across his knuckles as the scabs split open, but he did his best. Thog took one tentative pace upwards, adjusting his hands on the rope to keep his body horizontal. The crossbow swung uncomfortably between his shoulderblades. I didn't know you had any grandchildren, Thog. The thought was artificially light. Bound to have, he responded. Unless all my little accidents went into holy orders, or something. But I won't know who your grandchildren are, Thog. Look, there must be enough of 'em that all you need to do is tell lots of children, all right? Chances are that half of them will be descended from me in some forgotten way or other. They were thirty feet up, and Thog realized that their idle banter was helping him banish the shooting pains from his shoulder and ankle. His feet were sticking to the stones like those of a fly. The only problem was that some of the crowd had begun to notice him. Assuming that he was performing the climb merely to be able to observe the execution at close hand, they started wildly cheering him on. He tried to silence them with a gesture, and almost fell. Regaining his precarious balance with difficulty, he cursed them roundly: the last thing he wanted was for the attention of those within the palace to be drawn to him. It would be a sorry irony if he found a welcoming party of Sharnazim awaiting him at the top of his climb. Were you really as wild as all that in your youth, Thog? Wild? Why d'you think they called me "the Mighty"? I don't think you were really like that at all. I think you probably hung up your morningstar and got married, had a few kids and . . . Silence! Shut your mouth, you bitch! She was shocked by the vehemence of his thoughts. She'd touched a nerve there. There was some great sadness in Thog's past, something that he'd buried beneath layer upon layer of affected bumbling good nature. She withdrew from that area rapidly.

The Book of the Magnakai // 129 Sorry, she thought humbly. She flashed a picture of herself bending over in front of him, facing away, a sign saying KICK ME floating in the air above her. I should, too, he thought grumpily, but she knew the anger was gone from him. Fifty feet up, now. They were nearly there. The crowd had become bored with the antics of the solitary climber. The executioner had gagged Kimah's mouth so that the insects couldn't escape. For similar reasons, the loincloth had been replaced by a tight-fitting swathe of bandage. The executioner was reaching for his knife. Thog's fingers caught the rough edge of the wall's top, and he hauled himself laboriously up onto it. He looked down dizzily at the sea of faces in the square, and then across at the platform where the executioner was strutting. His hands shaking from the effort of his climb, he unhitched the crossbow from his shoulders. If you know any good magic, woman, he thought, now's the time to come out with it. Look at my hands! Can you steady them for me? I'll try. Her thought was thin and unhopeful. He felt a tweaking sensation run along his arms, and his hands steadied. A little. He hoped it was enough. He knelt down and charged the crossbow with his final bolt. Some of the crowd were beginning to realize what he was planning to do. A wave of fury swept across the square – their bloodlust was not to be thwarted. Those of the mob who had crossbows of their own started to charge them. Already the first of their attempts had sizzled through the air uncomfortably close to him. Some were using slings, but luckily these were difficult to use accurately in the crowded square, and anyway most of the stones were falling short. Think I'd look good as a pincushion? he thought. Thog . . . Thog, right now I think you'd look good whatever you were. You weren't meant to answer. You're supposed to be concentrating on controlling the heroic hands of Thog the Mighty, woman. Get back to it! And don't forget the bit about telling my grandchildren, right? With Jenara's help and the fierce exercise of his own will-power, Thog was able to achieve a fairly stable aim. The sights of the crossbow were on Kimah's chest, just below the breast-bone. The executioner had become aware that there was something wrong, and was scowling across at Thog in angry bewilderment. This was his show, after all: he wasn't taking kindly to the prospect of the barbarian upstaging him. Fortunately his slow wits had yet to comprehend the implications of the crossbow. Very still now, hands. Keep very still.

The Book of the Magnakai // 130 The executioner had moved into Thog's line of sight, completely blocking out his view of the Zakhan, who had fainted. Jenara reached out a mental tentacle, and the executioner suddenly discovered that he wanted to move to another part of the platform for reasons that he couldn't quite fathom. Steady . . . steady . . . I have it . . . . . . NOW! A stone whizzed past the end of Thog's nose just as he squeezed the crossbow's trigger. Looking through his eyes, Jenara could see that the shot was going wide. She threw every last ounce of her magical energies after it. The bolt was deflected, as if it had been shot into an invisible curved channel floating in the air. It struck Kimah in the chest, penetrating ruthlessly through flesh and bone. The Zakhan slumped still further on the wooden frame. A little blood oozed out from around the bolt's stubby protruding base and trickled down over his stomach. Thog and Jenara imagined that they could see his twisted soul dribbling from his body along with the blood . . . There was a great "aaaah" of disappointment from the crowd, a brief silence, and then a cacophony of maddened shouting. The air around Thog became thick with missiles as he stood up, throwing the crossbow from him. Well done, he thought to Jenara. We made a great team, eh? Yes, but now let's focus on getting you out of this alive. It's a long way to jump . . . He heard her exasperated sigh. There must be a way down from the walls somewhere. The top's plenty wide enough for you to be able to run along it. Good idea anyway: get you further away from the mob. His armoury clanging around him, he lumbered clumsily along the wall towards the nearest corner. His wounds from the night before were starting to take their gruelling revenge for the exertions he'd demanded of them; in particular, his ankle was paining him so much that he became more convinced with each new pace that it was going to give way beneath him, pitching him to the tender mercies of the mob. Jenara was deflecting as many of the bolts and stones as she could, but the numbers were such that the task was impossible. A bolt sparked off Thog's helmet, the impact nearly throwing him fatally off-balance. A couple of stones bruised his body viciously. He reached the corner and looked leftward along the next stretch of wall. A pair of Sharnazim, having guessed his intentions, were hurrying towards him. Dimboes, he thought. When the crowds have finished with me they'll start on the Sharnazim instead. But the noise of the mob was changing.

The Book of the Magnakai // 131 Blinking his eyes against the sweat running down into them, he looked towards the square to see what was going on. Over the mass of heads he could see that the people at the back of the square were no longer watching him; instead they were turned towards the broad thoroughfare of Zakhan Street. And they were chanting, rhythmically, reverently: "Allani." "Allani." "Allani . . ." More and more people were swivelling themselves around to watch. In the mouth of Zakhan Street Allani appeared. He was mounted on a brown-and-black cart-horse that had clearly seen better days. Behind him, on loudly howling douggas, rode Berril and Anwar, both quite obviously petrified. None of them were armed, but it didn't matter. Cheering and chanting, the crowd was beginning to open up a space to let them through – through all the way to the main gate of the Imperial Palace. The two Sharnazim on the wall took one look at what was happening, and beat a hasty retreat. Saved by the cavalry, thought Jenara smugly. The rain of missiles around Thog had almost ceased. Not saved yet, lassie. Thog was right. A last stone struck him on the cheek-bone. The shock as much as the impact made him lose his footing. He pushed at the air, as if somehow he could support himself against it. Arms thrashing, he teetered for a long moment on the wall's edge. Then he fell. # Afternoon was beginning to cast its harsher light through the small window when Banedon suddenly put down his pen and clapped his hands together. "I'm hungry," he said. "You've done it, then?" said Lone Wolf eagerly. "Yes. The trouble with iterative calculations is that whichever end you start them is always the wrong one. The system I was using required a maximum of a hundred and seventeen trials, one of which had to give me the correct answer. Sure enough, it was the one hundred and eleventh." He grinned. "But if I'd started at number one hundred and seventeen and worked backwards, I'd have been down to about number six before I hit on the right one. It's always that way." Lone Wolf brushed aside the remark with a wave of his hand. "So what have you found out?" he said.

The Book of the Magnakai // 132 "The location of the Tomb of the Majhan," said Banedon smugly, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands together on his stomach. "Well," he amended, "its map coordinates – the next best thing. According to Tipasa's notes, the tomb is very close indeed to the oasis. But I meant what I said about being hungry. I'll give the coordinates to whichever of the dwarfs is at the helm, and then we must both grab something to eat." He tucked a small-scale map of the Dry Main under his arm and stood up. "How far is it?" said Lone Wolf. Banedon waited until they were halfway to the bridge before replying. "Not too far. My hunch was right – we've been heading in the right general direction. With a bit of luck we should be there by morning."

The Book of the Magnakai // 133 CHAPTER SEVEN Dying of the Light The foothills of the Koneshi Mountains rise out of the badlands some twenty-five miles south of the Tomb of the Majhan. Banedon's calculations using Tipasa's notes had enabled him to pinpoint the ancient site as lying about one hundred and fifteen miles west of the port of Bir Rabalou and the same distance south of the oasis of Bal-loftan; the three places formed a right-angled triangle on the map, with the Tomb of the Majhan lying at the right angle. It was among these foothills that the Skyrider was now hovering, hidden from the eyes of any nomads who might pass in the desert – and, more importantly, from the sight of the minions of Darkness. As Lone Wolf and Banedon trekked across the barren, eroded rock of the badlands, they felt rather than saw the sky begin to lighten with the approach of dawn. What the light revealed, as the Sun slowly climbed higher, was not reassuring. The sere slabs of red rock were going to be as hot as stove-plates in the heat of the day. Here and there lay large erratic boulders, as if they'd been scattered willy-nilly by a giant's hand. It was astonishing that the few clumps of etiolated brush that dotted the ghostly landscape had been able to survive at all. Lone Wolf looked back and saw the arc of the rising Sun peeping over the peaks of the Koneshi range and satisfied himself that the Skyrider was indeed invisible. They'd arrived a couple of hours ago, when it had still been pitch darkness. Banedon had roused Lone Wolf from his slumbers as they'd approached their destination, and the two men had choked down some bread and cheese while Mirkin carefully guided the Skyrider into its place of concealment. They'd washed down their breakfast with copious draughts of water, and were both now carrying bulging water-skins; the risk of dehydration in the badlands was high. All things considered, they'd been making good progress through the darkness. Lone Wolf hoped they could move even more quickly now that it was light. He said as much to Banedon, who nodded. "And I can help us a little now," said the magician. "I have a spell that can make the miles seem shorter, but I was missing one of the ingredients required. Let's pause when we reach the next patch of brush." A few minutes later they stopped, and Banedon crouched down. He took a twig of the flimsy plant and crumbled it to dust between his fingertips; then he added a few drops of their precious water supply to mix up a paste. He spread the paste in two small circles on a flat stone and let his fingers dance formally over each

The Book of the Magnakai // 134 of them for a few seconds. Finally he sat back on his heels and yawned. "Let's get moving," said Lone Wolf impatiently, assuming the spell was done. "Not yet," said Banedon. "Another five or ten minutes. I told you that sunlight was a vital ingredient." Lone Wolf chafed miserably, refusing to sit down despite Banedon's frequently repeated encouragements that he do so. The minutes seemed to be lazily crawling by as slowly as they could. At last Banedon was satisfied. The two blobs of paste had dried into grey, poisonous-looking pills. One he popped into his own mouth and chewed quickly, his face shrivelling as the astringent flavour of the desert plant tormented his taste-buds; the other he offered wordlessly to Lone Wolf, who looked at it doubtfully and made no move to take it. "Hurry up and swallow it," said Banedon eventually in a strangled voice. "It won't do you any harm." Reluctantly Lone Wolf took the pill and began to chew. His mouth was suddenly awash with a liquid whose taste was so acerbic that even his limbs began to throb in sympathy with his palate. He got the pill down as quickly as he could and seized a water-skin from Banedon. "That had better have been worth it," he muttered darkly after having taken a long pull at the skin. "It was, it was," said Banedon with a reassuring grin. Within a few minutes their bodies seemed to be filled with superhuman resources of energy, so that they were able to run where before they could only have walked. But there was more to the effects of the pills than that. When they'd been running for what seemed to Lone Wolf to have been about an hour he looked back and saw that the peaks of the Koneshis had almost vanished beyond the horizon. Moreover, the Sun was still not fully risen above them. His "hour" had been in reality only a few minutes. "Just how fast are we actually running?" he said to Banedon, noticing as he did so that his breathing was even and steady, rather than the gasping it ought to have been. "We're hardly trotting," said Banedon, "but we're nearly there." He refused to be drawn any further. Lone Wolf looked around him in disbelief. Their progress across the badlands indeed seemed to be at about jogging speed, but whenever he paused to look back he could see that they'd covered a far greater distance than he'd have reckoned possible. He shrugged. He didn't understand the workings of magic, and he was never particularly happy in their vicinity, but he had to admit that they could be useful at times. Like now. The effects of the pills were wearing off as they came within sight of their goal. At a gesture from Banedon, Lone Wolf joined him in the shelter of a large boulder shaped rather like a clenched

The Book of the Magnakai // 135 fist, and the two of them took turns at scanning the landscape ahead of them. The vassals of the Archlord had been busy. Cranes and earth-moving machines had sprung up in the desert like some alien flora, ringing a huge crater that had been excavated out of the sand and rock. From their vantage-point Lone Wolf and Banedon could see little of the interior of the crater except for a stretch of its far side, where the tiny figures of Giaks were visible. The little creatures were labouring unceasingly under the whips of attendant Drakkarim to remove further rubble from the enormous quarry. "That's a good sign," muttered Banedon. "What is?" "They're still digging. If they'd found the Book of the Magnakai they'd be gone by now." "That might not be all they want from the tomb. Maybe the Majhan buried other treasures with their dead." Banedon cocked his head to one side, speculating. "I don't think the Darklords have need of gold or jewels," he said. "If I were Haakon I'd want to get out of Vassagonia the moment I'd got my clutches on the book – I wouldn't hang around courting disaster for the sake of a few trinkets I could just as easily gather back at Helgedad." "True," conceded Lone Wolf. "That's the good news," said Banedon. "Now here comes the bad. Look over there." He pointed. Lone Wolf swore. By the side of the crater there was an encampment, twenty or thirty black bell-tents arranged in an orderly semicircle. Those must be the Drakkarim's quarters. More significant, though, was the vast, domed tent around which the others clustered. From its central pole was flying a pennant depicting a snarling Vordak – the emblem of the Archlord Haakon himself. As if to confirm the Archlord's presence, dozing on the sand in front of this huge tent was an Imperial Zlanbeast, its tail twitching languidly from time to time, presumably in response to whatever alien dreams were passing through its mind. "Yes. He's here in person," said Banedon. "That may make things . . . more difficult," said Lone Wolf. He rested his hand on the hilt of the Sommerswerd, and felt the reassuring incursion into him of the sword's soul-stuff. He recalled the time some years earlier when, with the weapon's aid, he had last killed a Darklord – the only time one had ever been killed since Ulnar I himself slew Vashna, over twelve hundred years before. Lone Wolf raised his eyebrows. It seemed improbable that two Darklords might die within such a short space of time – and at the hands of the same warrior. He hoped that he wouldn't encounter Haakon . . . "And the other bit of bad news, Lone Wolf," Banedon was saying, "is that you're stuck here for the rest of the day."

The Book of the Magnakai // 136 Lone Wolf nodded glumly. Between the boulder and the crater's edge there was not a square inch of cover. They would have to wait out the day and make their approach in darkness. Then the way that Banedon had expressed the point caught his attention. "How d'you mean, I'm stuck here?" he demanded. "Because I can be getting on with something useful," said Banedon. Briefly he explained to Lone Wolf that, while he was incapable of making himself invisible, he could conjure up a spell that would make it very difficult for people to notice him. He could be seen only if somebody knew that he was there and made a conscious effort to look for him. "And you can't make the spell work for me, too," said Lone Wolf resignedly. "I'm afraid not." Not meeting Lone Wolf's eyes, Banedon continued breezily: "I propose to seek out Tipasa. If he's still alive – which I rather doubt – this would be the logical place to bring him. There's no chance of his being able to escape" – Banedon gestured at the great expanses of desert and badlands all around them – "and he's close at hand to be slaughtered as soon as the Book of the Magnakai is unearthed. Assuming he hasn't been slaughtered already, of course." While he'd been speaking Banedon had also been tracing out convoluted shapes in the air with his fingers. Lone Wolf had observed him starting to do this, but then some whim had made him turn his eyes away from the magician to gaze out over the lifeless landscape. When Banedon stopped talking, Lone Wolf saw no particular reason to look at him, so he carried on his aimless survey of their surroundings. Banedon broke the silence a couple of minutes later. "You see how it works," he said. "What works?" said Lone Wolf. Banedon laughed softly. "Lone Wolf," he said, "turn and look at me." "Why?" Banedon laughed again. "See you later, Lone Wolf," he said. "See you later," Lone Wolf echoed. It was only some while afterwards that he realized quite how apposite the remark had been. # Lone Wolf crept forwards cautiously through night's blackness. The Moon was not yet up. The sky was filled with a thousand tiny diamonds that winked at him coldly. In the centre of the Drakkarim's encampment burned a huge fire, its flames crackling a spitting as they stretched towards the stars. Earlier Lone Wolf had seen the Drakkarim and Haakon himself dining on

The Book of the Magnakai // 137 the roast corpses of three Giaks which had dropped dead from overwork during the sweltering midday heat. Now there was nothing but silence from the black tents, but still the fire raged on. The Darklord was confident that here, in this remote region of the Dry Main, he was secure from interference, and few guards were posted. Lone Wolf had had to despatch a couple of Giaks, but in both cases it had been a ridiculously unequal contest: the little spawn were exhausted from their labours of the day. He had felt a genuine sympathy for them. There were also a few Drakkarim about, and these he was much more careful to shun. They were fresh and they were deadly, and he knew that their night vision was better than his own. Unlike a weary Giak, a Drakkar would put up a sustained fight, and the noise of it would draw his fellows down upon them like wasps to a jampot. Fortunately there were only a few of them. Lone Wolf prayed wordlessly that he could get into the quarry before the Moon rose. He sneaked forward a few yards more then froze, listening for the slightest sound that might indicate his presence had been detected. Nothing. Another few yards. Now Lone Wolf could see the main entrance to the Tomb of the Majhan, an arch of pinkish stone that had lain buried by the desert sands for centuries, protected from the prying eyes of humanity until Tipasa Edarouk had come here on his wanderings. He must have burrowed and tunnelled downwards to find the tomb; when he'd seen all that he could see he'd retreated, tidying the desert so that no one could follow in his footsteps and desecrate the holy place. But he'd reckoned without the obsessions of the creatures of Naar, and now the Tomb of the Majhan was open to the elements, its sacred rocks molested not by human hands but by those of the Darklands spawn. Lone Wolf could see that a single Drakkar had been left on guard at the archway. The man was cold in the night air, despite the brazier that glowed orangely nearby. He paced backwards and forwards, his breath steaming, and every now and then he paused to raise a flask to the mouth of his death-mask. Lone Wolf looked around him. So far as he could tell, there was no one else near. He picked up a handful of loose pebbles and tossed them into the shadows beyond the reach of the brazier's dim light. At once the sentry was alert, spinning round with his sword in his hand, his keen eyes searching the darkness. Lone Wolf stayed absolutely still, and at last the Drakkar relaxed, obviously thinking that the desert could do funny things to a person's hearing. Another handful of stones in the same general direction, and this time the sentry was convinced that there was an intruder

The Book of the Magnakai // 138 nearby. Sword at the ready, he advanced into the gloom, snuffling to himself agitatedly. His armoured boots made a crunching noise on the broken ground, and Lone Wolf took advantage of this to scurry as close to the archway as he dared, making sure to remain all the while in the places where the shadows were deepest. The Drakkar spent some time probing the darkness, still muttering and mumbling to himself. Perhaps quarter of an hour passed before he returned, only half-satisfied, to his post, and Lone Wolf cursed the many missed opportunities he'd had to slip through the entrance and into the tomb. He could have done so many times over, but he'd been terrified that the sentry might suddenly turn and see him in the orange light, and raise the alarm. He drew his dagger from his belt and crept silently up behind the Drakkar, who was bending over the brazier trying to garner some of its feeble heat. When Lone Wolf was within a yard of him he suddenly became aware that he was not alone and spun round. Sizing up the situation at once, he gave a growl of menace and struck Lone Wolf's wrist a mighty back-hand blow, so that the dagger went skittering away over the broken rock. Lone Wolf bit back a yelp of pain. The sentry's sword was once more in his hand, and he was drawing back his arm. There was no time for Lone Wolf to draw the Sommerswerd. He leapt forwards, throwing his full weight directly at the Drakkar's armoured chest. The Drakkar staggered a couple of paces backwards, and sat down on the coals of the brazier. The heat was conducted instantly through the metal of his armour, and Lone Wolf could tell that he was just about to yell in agony. He struck the death-mask a terrible blow on the mouth, shattering the thin rim of the hole there so that sharp flanges of metal were driven into the Drakkar's upper and lower lips. Overriding the pain of his hand Lone Wolf sprang to the Drakkar's side and seized the masked head around the neck, tightening the grip of his elbow like a vice. The Drakkar put up his hands to try to drive him off, but Lone Wolf, gasping with effort, his arm still locked in place, moved around to the Drakkar's rear, dragging the great head inexorably with him. There was a sudden c-r-r-rack, and the sentry's body lolled over backwards, almost onto Lone Wolf, who danced swiftly away. With a crash the body fell to the ground amid a stink of singed cloak and burnt Drakkar flesh. Again Lone Wolf sought the shadows. Surely one of the other guards must have heard the racket? Even the sound of the sentry's neck snapping had seemed deafeningly loud to him. But there were no noises of alarm except that of his own pulse racing. After a minute, reassured, he rapidly darted into the brazier's glow and grabbed the dead Drakkar under the armpits; moments later he had dragged the heavy body through the

The Book of the Magnakai // 139 archway and into the pitch blackness beyond. Nobody would be able to see it here until morning, but just to be on the safe side Lone Wolf upended a wheelbarrow he'd tripped over in the gloom and used it to conceal the corpse as best he could. As he straightened up he realized that the darkness wasn't quite absolute. Away in the distance he could see what looked like a tiny yellow-orange, many-faceted jewel glinting and twinkling at him. He could sense from the echoes of his movements that he was in some kind of broad corridor, and he realized that what he was seeing was a distant stretch of it that was illuminated by torches. He moved to the side of the corridor and felt the wall with his hand. All over the surface there were carvings, still sharp and clear after their long preservation beneath the sand; he traced some of them with his fingers, and realized that they were pictographic writing. He was unable to decipher any of the characters he found. He shivered. There was an aura of ancient death about this place, and he felt as if the spirits of all the Majhan were watching him from the darkness. He glanced around nervously, half-expecting to see little angry red eyes staring at him. There was nothing. Pull yourself together, he thought angrily. You're a warrior, not a child in a darkened bedroom, frightened of things going bump. Then he realized that, if anything did go bump in this particular darkness, he'd have good reason to be frightened. The thought sobered him, and his movements were very cautious as, his fingers still touching the wall for reassurance, he made his way silently over the sandy floor towards the light. Soon he found himself in a brightly lit section of the corridor, which stretched ahead of him, sloping gently downwards, for what he guessed must be about a mile. He pursed his lips and whistled silently. It was not so much the scale of the Tomb of the Majhan itself that impressed him as the enormity of excavation that had been carried out. Human workers would have required years for the task, but the armies of Giaks had taken less than a fortnight for it. It was hardly a wonder that even the squat, incredibly tough little spawn were dying from exhaustion. And they had served in other ways, he realized sickly. The smooth walls of the corridor were periodically broken where large chunks of masonry protruded. The outer edges of these slabs showed signs of having been recently worked; Lone Wolf had to suck in his breath as he squeezed past their rough edges. Near one of them he saw a crumpled Giak helmet, its interior smeared with green-grey ichor. He didn't need to be a genius to infer that the great stones were the remains of booby traps, set off by pressure-sensitive areas of the floor. The Drakkarim must have sent Giaks in ahead of them to spring the traps, so that the little creatures were crushed by the suddenly

The Book of the Magnakai // 140 emerging slabs; then they'd simply chiselled their way through before sending another unfortunate Giak ahead to explore the next section of corridor . . . Shortly afterwards, Lone Wolf came across the first of the traps set into the floor. A crooked green-grey finger projected from the surface of the sand, and he realized with a surge of revulsion that the pit must have been filled with the corpses of Giaks and then levelled over with sand. For the second time that day he found, to his bewilderment, that he was feeling a genuine sympathy towards the creatures that – with the exception of Carag – he had always regarded as no more than loathsome and particularly dangerous vermin. He lost track of time as he walked. He had to fight to stay alert: the silence of his feet in the sand and the atmosphere of complete isolation from the real world were all too apt to lull him into a dangerous relaxation. He drew the Sommerswerd. Just the feel of the weight of the weapon in his hand helped him maintain his vigilance. At last the corridor came to its end. Facing him was a massive stone door. The Drakkarim had been chipping away at the surrounds, but the surface of the door itself was unmarked except for a trimly carved triangular keyhole. Lone Wolf cursed under his breath. He remembered having seen keyholes like that some years before, when he'd braved the biting cold of Kalte to capture Vonotar from the depths of the ice fortress of Ikaya, and at the time he'd been lucky enough to discover a key that fitted them. Never expecting to have any further use for the little stone triangle, he'd kept it merely as a memento – back at the Monastery. If only I'd had the gift of second sight, he thought angrily. But how could I have guessed that part of Kaltese technology is derived from the same source as the Majhan's? He ran his fingers around the edges of the door, trying to find somewhere he could get any purchase. No luck. The door seemed to be immovable. He was on the verge of deciding to give up, to retrace his steps and try to find another entrance to the tomb, when he noticed a pinpoint of light on his outstretched sleeve. Startled, he glanced up and saw a tiny hole in the ceiling. Through it a tiny but brilliant white light was shining at him, like a solitary star in the night sky. He took a step back. In the torchlight all around, it was impossible to see the mote of light on the sandy floor. But if he moved his body so that he was casting a shadow over the place where it should be . . . There! Lone Wolf thought for a moment. The Majhan must have placed the light there for a purpose. Clearly it wasn't a trap: had it been, he wouldn't still be alive. Inspired by a sudden guess, he laid down the Sommerswerd at his side and knelt. Moving his hands swiftly but carefully, he

The Book of the Magnakai // 141 cleared a patch of sand to reveal a smooth surface of tooled stone. Putting his face close down, he blew across the surface to dispel the last few grains of sand. One of them refused to move until he flicked it away with the point of his dagger. Revealing another tiny hole. The only trouble was that the light from the ceiling didn't pass through this lower aperture; he could see its pale mark on the stone surface several inches away. Lone Wolf grinned. If his guess was correct, all he needed was a mirror. And it just so happened that . . . He stood, picked up the Sommerswerd, and placed its point on the floor between the hole and the spot where the tiny light had been falling. Adjusting the angles of the sword was a fiddly business, requiring patience, concentration and steadiness of hand, but at last he managed to reflect the beam of light so that, for just a moment or two, it shone straight into the hole in the floor. He was rewarded instantly. Creaking and groaning reproachfully, the vast stone door slowly grated open. # Lone Wolf swiftly retreated, so that he was standing with his back to the corridor wall, the Sommerswerd at the ready. His teeth bared as he waited for the enemy to pour out of the opening. There was silence except for the cackling of the torches. His breathing eased. Cautiously he crept forward and peered through the doorway. What he saw was a huge, dimly lit space. Away in the distance he could see an amorphous shape which he guessed to be the far wall of this vast chamber. The great room exuded coldness and stank of dust. Surely this was, at last, the Tomb of the Majhan. Lone Wolf's instincts were telling him that he was the first person have set eyes upon it for centuries – except, perhaps, for Tipasa Edarouk – but he knew that his instincts were lying to him. The sparsely spread torches couldn't have burned in their wall-sockets for all those years. And there were footprints in the dust in front of him – more footprints than he could hope to count, overlapping each other in a random pattern. Clearly the minions of Darkness must have discovered how to open the door. They'd been in here before him. They might still be in here. And, if they were, the opening of the door and the flood of torchlight that it brought must have betrayed his presence to them. Perhaps they were waiting silently in the murk, watching him, ready to pounce . . .

The Book of the Magnakai // 142 A shiver ran up his spine, and he shook his shoulders irritatedly. If he'd given way to his fears every time they'd assailed him he wouldn't have been here; he'd have been living as a recluse in the forests of northern Sommerlund, ever on the run from the Darklords' occupying armies, forever having to accept the knowledge that he'd betrayed the vows he'd taken when first he'd been admitted to the Order of the Kai . . . He grimaced. More likely he'd have been dead by now. He'd been holding back the soul-stuff of the Sommerswerd, but now he let the mental barrier down and felt it wash gratefully into him. The mighty weapon shone in a series of ever-brighter pulses until its glow seemed to illumine every corner of the great pillared chamber. If there were hidden enemies who hadn't noticed Lone Wolf's arrival before, they must certainly now be aware of his presence. But all was silence and stillness as he walked slowly into the cavernous room, his every movement betraying trepidation – at least, to his own eyes. There was a crash behind him, and he spun round instantly, his heart thumping. The door through which he'd just come had slammed shut. The echoes died away as once again he let his eyes rove over the details of the chamber. In all directions, scattered among the pillars, there were low, rectangular boxes hewn from the native rock. They weren't set out in any logical form or pattern; instead their positioning seemed to be arbitrary, as if they'd just been tossed there. Lone Wolf knew instinctively that the pattern couldn't be as random as it seemed; he recalled the way that the street-plan of Toran looked as if it were nothing more than a hodge-podge, yet was in fact a precisely laid-out sigil on a grand scale, the details of the design of which was essential for the magical defence of the city. He was certain, without having any evidence by which he could have proved it, that the arrangement of the sarcophagi must have some similar significance. The ancient races had almost always had some purpose for their designs, even if that purpose was unfathomable to the human mind. Atop each of the coffins lay a figure carved in stone – presumably a likeness of the Majhan within. Lone Wolf paused to look at one of these, running his fingers over the dusty creases of its cold, grainy surface. To judge by the portrayal, the Majhan had looked very much like human beings – but not quite. He couldn't place exactly what it was about the form that was subtly wrong, but his subconscious was telling him that it was there. And it was the not-quiteness that made them seem more alien than any monster of the damned. There was a rumbling noise. Discarding his musings, he sprang to the alert. Away on the far side of the chamber there was what had appeared to be nothing

The Book of the Magnakai // 143 more than a large, shapeless, crudely carved lump of rock. But now it was moving, turning around slowly. As it did so, Lone Wolf could see that what he'd been looking at was the rear of a colossal throne, hewn out of a single great boulder like one of those that littered the badlands outside. The throne was not vacant. The vast dark figure sitting in it allowed the throne to continue its ponderous rotation until he was facing out over the room, his eyes fixed with a brilliance that could be seen clear across the chamber on the solitary figure of Lone Wolf. The throne chunked to a halt. The Darklord Haakon, Lord of Aarnak and Archlord of Darkness, rose to his feet almost ceremonially, his voluminous black cape spreading in the dust-choked air around him. He raised one of his spiked fists high above his head and slowly opened out his hand. Secure in the palm of his black glove was a crystal sparking with light of an unearthly blue. Haakon opened his mouth, and all the chamber was filled with a thunderous ululation. Despite himself, Lone Wolf felt his body cowering backwards in the face of that assault of sound. The Archlord was speaking in the Dark Tongue of Naar himself. The God of Evil had entered into the shell of his creature, and was speaking directly through Haakon's mouth to the Sommlending warrior. The words were meaningless to Lone Wolf, but he could feel something of their sense. There was wrath there, and frustration. Most of all there was a universal malice, focused now upon Lone Wolf's pitifully frail mortal body. He raised the Sommerswerd in defiance. The weapon felt as if it weighed three times as much as usual. The screaming shout ebbed. The stillness it left behind it seemed almost palpable. When Haakon began to speak in his normal roar, Lone Wolf had to strain to make out the words. "Look on your doom, Kai Lord!" The crystal in the Darklord's palm became a beacon of blue light brighter than the Sun. It pulsed once and then, in a torrent of brilliance, a bolt of raw malevolent energy sprang from it, sizzling as it ionized the air. The Sommerswerd, moving of its own volition, intercepted the blast of malign force directly in front of Lone Wolf's face. The first he knew of what was happening was when the jar of the impact twisted the weapon from his hand so that it went spinning end over end to clatter among the sarcophagi. With a thunderclap of sound a great mass of rock fell from the wall of the chamber to shatter on its floor. Startled for their different reasons, both Lone Wolf and Haakon turned their shocked gazes to the huge crater the reflected beam of energy had gouged out of the solid stone.

The Book of the Magnakai // 144 And then Lone Wolf was diving for cover, rolling across the dusty floor to take refuge behind a fluted pillar. The Darklord snarled with rage, but then his snarls turned into a mocking laughter that was even worse. "There is no escape, Kai whelp," he boomed. "Your doom is only seconds away." Lone Wolf, panting frantically in the temporary shelter of the pillar, was beginning to agree with the Darklord's assessment. The Sommerswerd was yards away, across a stretch of unprotected space. He was armed only with a dagger. He might as well have been totally weaponless. Unless . . . He threw the dagger away behind him, so that it rattled invisibly against a couple of coffins before coming to rest. A simple trick. But it had worked against the sentry and now, for the briefest moment, it worked against Haakon. The Darklord's gaze shifted, and in that instant Lone Wolf sprinted across the open space, scooped up the Sommerswerd, and dived behind another pillar. Haakon had caught a glimpse of the sudden motion, and he bellowed with fury. Once again the crystal in his hand pulsed with brilliance, and a ball of energy ripped away the base of the pillar behind which Lone Wolf was crouching. There was an ear-shattered roar of tortured rock as Lone Wolf was blown backwards over a sarcophagus to land with a crash on the floor behind it. The breath was forced out of his body and his forehead cracked down hard on the stone floor. He lay there, sucking in air in painful gasps, totally defenceless, as the sound of falling rock filled the chamber. At last, when the noise had died away to a sporadic patter of dropping pebbles, Lone Wolf was able to force himself groggily up onto his hands and knees. Somehow he'd managed to retain his grasp on the Sommerswerd; he looked at the sword blearily, wondering if he'd be able to summon up the strength to wield it. But then he felt its soul-stuff in him. Slowly at first, but then with increasing swiftness, his head cleared. Soon his muscles were taut as he crouched, ready to spring as soon as Haakon made a false move. The Darklord had other ideas. He began to bawl with rough laughter. Haakon might not be able to make out exactly where Lone Wolf was, but that hardly mattered if he could destroy the Kai brat's mind. He focused his own internal mental energies, and then allowed their malevolence to seep from him to spread out throughout the tomb. The first that Lone Wolf felt, hunched in the shadows, was a tickling sensation at the back of his scalp. He groaned. He knew what that sensation presaged. The Vordak that had attacked him in the sky had attempted to crush

The Book of the Magnakai // 145 his mind in the same way. It hadn't worked then . . . but a Vordak wasn't a Darklord. And then the rime-rimmed voice of his gestalt was within him. Lone Wolf was already in too much psychic anguish even to acknowledge its unheralded arrival, but its cold, ancient voice cut through his agony. I am here to be your strength, Lone Wolf, it said. Let me show you the way to become oblivious of the Darklord's torments. And then it was as if a frigid, claw-like hand had taken Lone Wolf's and was leading him along the twists and turns of cobwebbed passages where no human foot had trodden since time itself began. He had the sensation that he was breathing cloyingly thick air, that he might drown in his own inhalations. He experienced the roar of Haakon's derisive laughter and the pain of the psychic daggers that were twisting in his own consciousness as if it were all happening to someone else. He was distanced from himself, but the murk of the passageway ahead of him seemed to menace and even worse fate than the one from which he'd escaped. Except that then he was bursting out into the arms of golden sunshine, leaving all the pain and all the dread behind him ... . . . and Lone Wolf was on his hands and knees in the Tomb of the Majhan, looking at the filth of the floor. Haakon's mockery was still loud in his ears, but now it seemed to be a trivial irrelevance, hardly even an irritation any longer. The agony that had threatened to overwhelm him was gone. His heart was still beating rapidly, but he was able to muster a smile. He was immune from Haakon's mind-destroying assault but, even better, the Darklord didn't yet know it. Without taking any undue precautions – the racket of the Darklord's mirth would drown any small noise that Lone Wolf might make – he slipped among the stone coffins until he was halfway across the tomb from his original position. There he chanced a glance out from behind a pillar, and saw that Haakon, too, was now moving. The Darklord, still laughing, strode to the pile of rubble where once there had been a pillar and towered over it, his gimlet eyes seeking the cringing, crazed form of the Kai Lord. Lone Wolf saw Haakon stiffen in furious astonishment when he discovered nothing there. After glancing sharply and incredulously around, the Darklord stooped and scrabbled among the fallen rocks in the hope that Lone Wolf might have been buried beneath them. When he found nothing, Haakon cursed long and loud in the Dark Tongue and then, superbly confident in his own invulnerability, he rose to his full height, spreading out his arms so that the cape draped from them formed the silhouette of the wings of a gigantic bat. "Your games bore me, Lone Wolf," he shouted. "But you cannot escape my wrath. You are but delaying your death . . . by seconds."

The Book of the Magnakai // 146 He fell silent but Lone Wolf could see, curling upwards and outwards from the Darklord's eyes and nose and ears and mouth, a mist that was as black as the void of Naar itself. Soon he could see nothing of Haakon's enormous figure for the mist between them; it was as if the Darklord had transformed himself into an impenetrably black column of smoke, that roiled with angry impatience at being held in check. Eddies formed and ran together in the turbulent mist, clotting to take on an inchoate solidity before moulding themselves into a definite shape. For the first time since his gestalt had led him out of the dusty passages and into the glad land of the Sun, Lone Wolf felt fear striking into his heart. The mist was thinning as more and more of the shapes attained independent reality. Evilly small wings sprouted from a seamed, crinkled core whose only other feature was a toothless gash of a mouth. Crypt spawn! The vilest of all the creatures reared in the dungeons of Helgedad. No larger than a water-rat, they could grip human beings by the flesh and slowly suck their very souls from them to be lost forever in the void of Naar. There were a dozen or more of the spawn flittering and fluttering in the air as they spiralled towards Haakon's outstretched arms, where they perched like birds on a wire, their veined wings twitching restlessly. A terrible smile crossed the Darklord's face. Gently he turned his head and blew along the length of his right arm. Then he did the same for his left. The crypt spawn rose in a flock and circled high towards the roof of the tomb. Although they had no eyes, Lone Wolf knew that soon they must see him where he squatted in the pillar's shelter. In the name of Ishir, he thought desperately to his gestalt, tell me what I should do now! His request was greeted by a mental silence. And then Lone Wolf realized what he must do. He couldn't hope to beat off the crypt spawn – there were too many of them and the creatures moved too swiftly for him to have a chance of that – but the spawn derived their existence directly from the Darklord. If he could only destroy the Darklord . . . As he had destroyed that other Darklord, Zagarna, years ago in Holmgard . . . He stood up, the Sommerswerd a golden flame in his grasp, and moved into the open. Haakon saw him at once, and smiled again. "So at last you have seen defeat, Kai brat," thundered the Darklord. "You come to surrender yourself to me, praying for an easy death. But no – I may be merciful on many occasions, but not

The Book of the Magnakai // 147 on this one, not to you. You are a warrior who has lived by the sword, so it is only fitting that you should die by it." The soul-stuff of the Sommerswerd was throbbing with his own through Lone Wolf's veins. This was how it had felt when he had slain Zagarna. He drew together the melded warmth of their soul-stuffs until it formed a sweltering ball of spiritual energy in his chest, surrounding his heart with its blanketing heat. Slowly he raised the golden sword in front of him to shoulder-height, looking along its full length as he directed its point unerringly towards Haakon's leering face. And then Lone Wolf willed the knot of soul-stuff to flee along the weapon's blade to sear the Darklord with its light. The Sommerswerd pulsed with such brilliance that the tomb seemed to have been plunged into a vat of molten steel, yet the soul-stuff remained locked within the two of them. Haakon was laughing scornfully again. "The world is full of fools, Lone Wolf," he said. "Zagarna was one of them and you are another. Do you really think such petty tricks will avail you against my might? How can you draw upon the soul of the Sun when you are so far from its accursed rays." He gestured towards the many yards of rock and earth above them. The crypt spawn chittered venomously as they fluttered around in the vault of the dome, held in check by the Darklord's will. Ishir save me! thought Lone Wolf despairingly. It seemed that no one else could. "No," said the Darklord, "as I said, Lone Wolf, it is fitting that you shall die by the sword." His eyes never leaving Lone Wolf's face, his smile still spreading, Haakon showed him the pulsing crystal still clutched in the palm of his outstretched right hand. Then he touched the fingers of his left hand to one of the crystal's facets for an instant before slowly pulling them away. With his hand there came from the crystal a shaft of unholy blue light, which extended until it was as long as the Sommerswerd. As Lone Wolf watched, the shaft coalesced in upon itself, as if it were cooling, to become a sword as mighty as the one he bore himself. The golden light of the Sommerswerd seemed already to be doing battle with the alien coldness of that brilliant blue blade. Lone Wolf sprang up onto the top of the nearest sarcophagus. Haakon's towering height still dwarfed him, but the reduction of the disparity somehow helped keep his fears at bay. Yet he frowned, too. Thoughts and schemes were racing through his mind, and that wasn't as it should be. He was thinking too much. Thoughts and rationalizations could only hinder him in the combat to come. And then at last he felt its onset.

The Book of the Magnakai // 148 His field of vision slowly became limned with red, as if a crimson ink were seeping into the cloth of his sight, and the world that he could see seemed all of a sudden somehow smaller. His lips pulled back from his teeth, and he gave vent to a feral snarl. The bloodlust was in him. The Sommerswerd moved like the head of a predatory bird spying out its next victim. Haakon flinched. He had never seen this transformation before. He was instantly aware that he had underestimated his foe, yet he was in way worried: was he not the invincible agent of Darkness? The blue sword leapt in his hands, its blade springy and deadly. "Let me see your skills as a swordsman, then, whelp!" he jeered. "It would give me pleasure to watch you display your primitive artistry before you die." "It is you who shall die," Lone Wolf tried to say, but the only sound that came from his throat was a meaningless babble. Then he was on the floor again and moving very quickly. Before Haakon realized what was happening, Lone Wolf had danced close by him and slashed him across the loins, drawing no blood but shocking his senses with the doubts the strike planted in his mind. He lashed out with his shining blue weapon but struck only air; the Kai warrior was already beyond his reach. The Darklord spat with rage. His grey phlegm steamed into nothingness before it hit the ground. And now Lone Wolf was doing the laughing. The vermin was mocking him – Haakon, Lord of Aarnak and Archlord of Darkness, unquestioned Ruler of All the Darklords and Servant on Earth of the God of Evil himself, Naar. Rage clouded Haakon's vision. Lone Wolf saw it, and took advantage of the fact to skip past the mighty figure once again, this time jabbing viciously at Haakon's right knee and drawing from the Darklord a mighty howl of surprised pain. Once again the blue blade swished through the air uselessly, as Haakon felt a sudden searing pain at the base of his spine. The Kai scum was behind him now, attacking from the rear! The Darklord turned ponderously, groping with his sword, but Lone Wolf was moving much too nimbly for him – all he saw was a flurry of motion that ceased before he could focus his eyes on the place where it had been. Now Lone Wolf was using words to taunt him. "Remember Vashna," the Kai was calling to him. "He was invulnerable, too, and was going to conquer all the world. And no one could kill Zagarna, but that didn't stop Zagarna from being killed. And now, Haakon, it's your turn, isn't it? Your time to meet the spirit of vileness that thought you and your kind into existence." Haakon struck out blindly, futilely.

The Book of the Magnakai // 149 "They say that Naar does not smile upon those who have failed him," cried Lone Wolf, his voice sounding as if he were trying to hold back bubbles of laughter. There was another flash of motion too rapid for Haakon to follow, and a fiery pain came from the region of his stomach. "But maybe that's just a rumour. Soon you'll find out for sure, Haakon." The Darklord shook his great head annoyedly. None of the injuries he had received from Lone Wolf's liquid blade had been more than trivial, yet he was allowing them and his fury to govern his thinking, so that he was in danger of being swallowed up by a quagmire of fuddled bewilderment. Another wasp-sting. The tip of the Sommerswerd had cleaved clean through the leather of his spiked glove to cut deeply into the back of his right hand. The suddenness of the pain almost made him drop his sword. And again the brat was beyond his reach. Forgotten, the crypt spawn watched from on high, unable to move to help their master until he commanded them to do so. Through the haze of his bloodlust, Lone Wolf found to his astonishment that he was almost beginning to enjoy himself. He felt no fear any longer, just the joyous singing of his blood as his body moved with smooth ease, obeying his every instruction precisely. He knew that he had yet to inflict any serious physical harm on Haakon, but the psychological effects of his jeering and his snake-swift strikes were dramatic: the Darklord's shoulders were already slumping, and his faceted eyes had a desperate aura about them. It was the first time in his centuries-long life that anyone except another Darklord had dared to stand against him, and Haakon was totally perplexed, lost without a map in some mental terra incognita. Again Lone Wolf darted forward. Again the Sommerswerd painfully found flesh to bite on before Lone Wolf skipped away in a different direction. Again the Darklord bellowed in fury as his gleaming blue blade missed its mark. And this time the wound had not been quite so trivial. Ichor was gouting from the inside wrist of the Darklord's sword-arm. It hissed and spat as it splattered to the floor, discoloured gases lazily wafting away from it. As Haakon brayed wrathfully Lone Wolf took the chance to make another of his fleeting attacks. But this time it was he who committed the sin of overconfidence. His boot caught on a stone and he stumbled for an instant, just long enough for Haakon to recover his senses and bring the blazing blue sword swooping around to crash against Lone Wolf's back. Luckily it was the flat of the blade that hit him: had it been the edge he must surely have been cut in half. As it was, the blow lifted him clear off his feet and sent him crashing against a pillar with numbing force. He collapsed onto his knees, his shoulder-blades aching as if they were shattered.

The Book of the Magnakai // 150 Behind him he heard Haakon's soft growl of satisfaction as the Darklord moved in for the kill. Forcing his agonized body to move, Lone Wolf rolled to one side just as the blue sword clashed against the dusty rock floor where he'd been kneeling. Sparks flew like shooting stars and the Darklord grunted in a mixture of frustration and pain as the vibration of the blow travelled up his arm. Lone Wolf dragged himself to his feet and lunged out with the Sommerswerd at the Darklord's unguarded shoulder. The point dug deep into the muscle, but the sword dragged as he tugged it out and Haakon was able to turn and lash at him. Just in time Lone Wolf raised the Sommerswerd against the malevolent arc of blue light that sprang towards his throat, and the two swords clashed together with a noise that made small stones rattle from their moorings in the crater that the Darklord's bolt of energy had created in the wall. The soul-stuffs of the swords locked in combat for a scintilla of time, but it was long enough for Lone Wolf to feel the absolute coldness of Evil that lay at the heart of the transcendental weapon. He forced the blade away with a supreme effort, and hobbled backwards, his breath rasping. A stitch was biting acidly in his side, but he thrust its sharp pain away from him. The Darklord was advancing on him once again. Lone Wolf retreated. Standing close to a coffin, as he was, his space was too confined for him to be able to defend himself effectively. Undignifiedly he scrambled backwards over the stone Majhan, landing an ungainly sprawl on the far side just as the blue sword chopped deep into the sculpture, sending rock-dust flying. The impetus of his advance took Haakon's massive form an extra pace forwards, so that for a moment he was leaning right over the sarcophagus, he fetid breath flooding down onto Lone Wolf. Who sprang directly upwards, the Sommerswerd vertically ahead of him. The golden blade sank deep into the Darklord's exposed throat and on to shatter his spine at the base of his skull. The faceted eyes instantly misted over. A final great bubbling bellow came from the Darklord's tight-stretched lips. The crackling blue blade vanished as if it had never been as Haakon's reflexes drew his hands half-up, as if they would try to wrench the Sommerswerd from its berth, but they fell limply before coming within inches of the glowing blade. Lone Wolf tugged hard at the weapon and reluctantly it slid free, bringing with it a torrent of green-grey ichor that gushed down onto Lone Wolf's legs and back as he scrambled away and the Darklord's body collapsed forwards over the sarcophagus. As Lone Wolf watched from a safe distance, Haakon's corpse seemed to shrink in its funereal clothing, the garments falling inwards softly until, at last, they were just a heap of stained clothing draped across the coffin.

The Book of the Magnakai // 151 There was a final whumph! of imploding air, and at last Haakon was in the unforgiving arms of Naar. Lone Wolf relaxed, almost welcoming the flooding pain from his bruised body as his muscles eased. And then he heard a rustling noise above him. The crypt spawn! In the heat of the battle he'd forgotten all about them. Stiffly he bullied his body into an alert posture, the Sommerswerd raised to defend himself from their attack. But he needn't have troubled. Deprived of the vile spirit that had created them, the spawn were dropping lifelessly to the floor. One of them landed near Lone Wolf's foot and he turned his face away swiftly, sickened to his soul. # Long minutes later he felt able to move again. Dragging his lethargic feet, not looking at the bundle of rags that had once been the Archlord of Darkness, his mind numb with the delayed reaction and the exhaustion the bloodlust always left behind it when it retreated from him, he stumbled over to the huge rocky throne where Haakon had been seated. The Darklord had been staring at a rectangular hatch set perfectly into the wall. As with the door to the tomb, there were marks all around the hair-thin line that demarked the edges of the hatch, but this time there was no keyhole and there was no ray of light. Instead, moulded into the stone beneath a carving of a seven-headed dragon spitting fire, there was the imprint of a human hand. Haakon must have been looking at the hatch, trying to solve a problem to which there was no solution. For him. Who could tell by what magic the Majhan had known that their greatest treasure should remain sealed to all except the one whom Ishir should elect as its recipient? There was no rational thought in Lone Wolf's mind as he reached out his arm and fitted his hand into the carved impression. The stone felt warm to his touch for a moment, and then it evaporated. Surrounded by directionless, glowing radiance and set on a low lectern of plainly shaped mahogany lay a book bound in beaten gold. Lone Wolf touched it. It seemed as if the bright metal were reaching out to clasp him by the hand. Then he lifted the book and held it to his breast. It rested in his arms naturally, as if it had always been there. As Qinefer once had.

The Book of the Magnakai // 152

The Book of the Magnakai // 153 CHAPTER EIGHT Take Back Plenty It was nearly the dawn of a new day and Lone Wolf was rounding the curve of one of the great boulders of the badlands, the Book of the Magnakai tucked under his arm. He had had no difficulties leaving the Tomb of the Majhan: those few minions of Darkness that were wakeful had been stunned into apathy by the loss of their Archlord. They had shown no interest in the fair-haired warrior who moved among them, nor in the golden book he bore. But ahead of him now in the grey light of the badlands stood two figures who displayed nothing of that hopelessness – and one of them was a Drakkar. Moving clumsily, encumbered by the weight of the book, Lone Wolf drew the Sommerswerd, and prepared wearily to fight for his own life and that of the bent old man around whose shoulders the Drakkar had his arm. Then he realized that the Drakkar was laughing at him. "I had to borrow some clothing," called Banedon's voice cheerfully. The magician unhinged the death-mask and threw it from him. It came to rest among the spindly branches of a scrub bush. Lone Wolf and the old man – Tipasa – introduced themselves to each other while Banedon pored over the book, his face sombre as he tried in the pale light to make out the faded writing. He glanced up at the rising Sun and closed the book firmly. If Lone Wolf would permit it, he would take another look at the book later, in soft artificial light that wouldn't fade the ink still further. Despite constant and occasionally quite strident interrogation, Lone Wolf never did find out how Banedon had come to lose his clothing. # They were in Ikaresh when the news reached that town of Kimah's death and then elevation of Allani to the zakhanate. They had been there for several days, staying in the Crocked Condor as the guests of the Widow Soushilla – "The first non-paying guests I've had in all the decades of my life" she said proudly to anyone who'd listen to her. When the tidings arrived from Barrakeesh she threw a party in the tavern that was more uproarious than any she could remember, and of all the people there she was the one to dance most fervently. Lone Wolf, still recovering from his bruises, had one dance with her and privately concluded that he might have been safer in the embrace of the Darklord.

The Book of the Magnakai // 154 Banedon discovered that he had added a new indelible memory to his small collection. All of the stupefying sights that he'd seen over the past few days might fade from his mind, but he knew that he would never forget the first rush of glad tears to the eyes of Tipasa's wife when she'd opened the door to Lone Wolf's firm knock and found her husband standing there, smiling, his arms open to enfold her. It made Banedon feel good and so, at the party, for once he allowed himself to get drunk. The dwarfs had been that way for some time now, ever since Lone Wolf and Banedon had returned to the Skyrider with the Book of the Magnakai, in fact, and so they hardly noticed the party except as an excuse to become even more boisterous than before. When Banedon rose dizzily from his bed the following afternoon, the first thing he did was some fast explaining to the officer in charge of the town prison, who grinned as he delivered the dwarfs into the magician's care. There were double swabbin' duties for all the dwarfs as the Skyrider sailed easily across the mountains and the desert to Barrakeesh. # There they stayed for a week as guests in the Imperial Palace. Allani was looking drawn and tired from the burdens of his office, but he and his new wife arranged that the city should give them all a heroes' welcome. After the tumult of the cheering crowds, it was good to relax in the peace and tranquillity of the palace. Lone Wolf enjoyed the irony of strolling at his ease through the corridors and along the balconies where once he'd had to flee or fight for his life. Here was the place where he had killed the Drakkar, and there was the platform from which the itikar had borne him, and now here was the place where he'd paused and . . . . . . eyes that were no longer like human eyes . . . . . . a face that was a familiar face but no longer a face that he really knew . . . . . . words that he had failed to understand, then had begun to understand, then had once more failed to understand, but now again was beginning to understand . . . . . . echoes of laughter, echoes of tears . . . . . . the emptiness that gnawed at him, especially during the lonely darkness . . . . . . emptiness . . . He smiled rarely during the last two days they spent in Barrakeesh, and Banedon knew that his temporary magic had been washed away by the flow of time. #

The Book of the Magnakai // 155 The dwarfs departed southward in the Skyrider while Lone Wolf and Banedon set sail in the flagship of a flotilla of Vassagonian vessels bound for Sommerlund. Lone Wolf bore with him a truce, signed by Allani and countersigned by himself, declaring that henceforth the nations of Sommerlund and Vassagonia would be forever at peace. Privately Lone Wolf wondered how long the truce would endure: declarations of "everlasting peace" had a habit of being short-lived. But he knew that Allani's pledge was good and that, so long as he should retain the zakhanate, the two countries would indeed be allies. What he would not discover for long years was that reports of Kimah's death had, astonishingly, been greatly exaggerated. Amid the chaos surrounding the palace after Thog's fall from the wall, two of the Sharnazim had succeeded in cutting down what they assumed to be the corpse of their tyrant. Yet the crossbow bolt had narrowly missed the man's heart, and there was still a flicker of life within him. He and, at sword-point, the royal apothecary were smuggled away into the depths of the Baga-darooz, in whose fetid atmosphere the warped Vassagonian slowly recovered his strength. Whith his physical revival grew his thirst for vengeance against the two men he blamed for his downfall – Allani and especially Lone Wolf – and he swore on the name of Naar that he would destroy them both. In due time . . . Once he'd recovered the Darklord's "trinket", the Orb of Death . . . Banedon, standing on deck one day, watching the sea's slow but powerful surging, realized that he had discovered three new things. One was a spell that would control his seasickness, and he thanked Ishir from the bottom of his heart for having blessed him with the knowledge. The second was the strength of his affection for Thog. When he'd first seen the mighty barbarian on his arrival at the palace he'd hardly recognized the gigantic figure swaddled in dressings and limping piteously. Only when he'd noticed the humming flies around the bandaged head had he guessed who it could be. A rumbling voice extolling the virtues of whichever town planner had chosen to place a duck-pond exactly there had confirmed his guess. Still limping a little but freed of his bandages, Thog had waved them farewell from the quayside. The third thing was that he now had yet another indelible memory for his portfolio. He'd been walking quite unsuspectingly through the palace one day when a slender arm dressed in maroon silk had reached out of a dark niche and seized him by the collar. Moments later he'd been in the darkness himself, being kissed with a passion and ardour that he would never have believed possible. During one of the few intervals, an unidentifiable voice had whispered to him, "I've been wanting to do this for a long time." It had been many minutes before Jenara had released him, reeling dizzily, back into the light.

The Book of the Magnakai // 156 He'd looked at her accusingly several times since then, but she'd failed to do the decent thing and blush. Instead she'd merely smiled a secret, puckish smile at him. And she a married lady. # "Hey, there, friend! What're you doing?" Lone Wolf looked down. Viveka was standing at the foot of the hillock on which he was seated. As he let his eyes wander upwards he found himself looking at the proud walls of the Monastery. In the weeks since he'd been away she'd bullied and cajoled the Kai acolytes and some of the farmers in the area to work wonders. The thought of the acolytes disturbed chilly echoes in his mind. He was supposed to instruct them in the lore of the Kai, and now – in the form of the Book of the Magnakai – he had the means to do so. And yet never had he felt less qualified to be entrusted with the teaching of anything to anybody. "Just looking at the scenery," he said, dredging up a smile from somewhere. Then, more softly: "Just looking at the scenery." "Well you can't just sit around moping the whole time, Lone Wolf. Supper's ready, and we're waiting for you so that we can all start eating." Again the ghastly smile. "Go ahead without me. I'll be with you in a while." He turned away to gaze back out across the neverness. Two strong hands clutched him by the upper arm and a voice hissed in his ear: "Come to supper now or I'll break this bone." He followed her docilely. That night he was almost asleep when he felt the breeze of someone pushing aside the hangings of the doorway of his cell. He was twisting under his rugs, reaching for a dagger, when he was stayed by a whisper. "Sometimes you need a friend to hold." # It was never repeated and they never talked about it. Except once. Three years later, three years of long and patient study while Lone Wolf garnered from the Book of the Magnakai the knowledge of three of the ten Magnakai disciplines and imparted to the growing acolytes as much of his own knowledge as he could, and once again he was astride his horse, Reason for Coming Back, and preparing to leave the Monastery. Viveka was standing at Reason for Coming Back's head and feeding the mare a handful of

The Book of the Magnakai // 157 nuts. When the last had gone, the horse began to butt Viveka's shoulder playfully, begging for more. "You'll be all right, won't you?" she said lightly, not looking directly at him. "Yes." He grinned, mocking her affectionately. "Of course I will. Now that I have two `reasons for coming back'." "That," she said firmly – and now she was staring straight into his eyes – "is strictly between ourselves. Now go, and Ishir go with you." As Reason for Coming Back picked her way along the trail through the forest, the image of Viveka's face faded in his mind to be replaced by the passage in the Book of the Magnakai that he had finally succeeded in deciphering several nights earlier: Seek and find the Lorestone of Varetta, for this alone holds the power and the wisdom . . . Only a few words penned by Sun Eagle long centuries before, and yet they gave Lone Wolf enough of a clue. There was frost on the naked branches of the trees but, for all that, the early-morning Sun was bright in the pale blue sky. A feather of white cloud was fleeing from the blazing disc. Reason for Coming Back clipped steadily along the trail.