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  Guardians of the Gate

  Louis Trimble

  I

  THE ALLEY STRETCHED toward the sea, dark and stench ridden. Teron hesitated at its mouth, his eyes fastened on the faint pulsing radiance beckoning him into the darkness. He heard no voice with his ears, but his mind filled with a sound coming from the direction of that radiance.

  “Teron. Teron of Korv. Quickly, Teron! The drig are near!”

  He was no mentaler beyond the little bit he needed to help with his profession as legerdemain and escape artist. Yet he was hearing that voice in his head as clearly as any he had ever heard through his ears. Still he hesitated, not understanding fully and doubting that part he could believe.

  Behind him rose the swelling sounds of running, seeking men. The hunters had found his scent. Teron held himself motionless a moment longer to wonder why hunters should be seeking him. He had seen them more than once in his journeys along the Warm Sea—roving bands of assassins, hiring out to the highest bidder. But he was small game for them. Why should anyone want to rid the world of a mere stage magician?

  He found no answer, and now there was no time for speculation. The radiance far down the alley was pulsing rapidly, and he could feel anguish hammering at his mind. Once more the voice echoed inside his head: “Teron, the drig come!”

  Drig! Moments before he would have laughed, suspecting one of his fellow performers of playing a trick. But that would not explain the voice in his mind nor the hunters at his back. And trick or not, the alley

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  seemed the safer place to be. Taking his spellstafE from its holder on his shoulder carryall, he hurried into the darkness and toward the now fading radiance.

  His boots slipped on slime and his throat threatened to close against the stench, but with the help of his staff he managed to keep his balance. Suddenly the glow disappeared. It flared up again, but to one side, and Teron realized it had moved. Half of it was swallowed as a shapeless blob of darkness, deeper that that cast by the clouded night, settled down.

  Teron was near enough to feel the coldness sweeping from that blob of dark. It seemed to freeze the breath on his lips, to coat his muscles with ice.

  The voice cried, “Teron, your staff 1 The drig, Teron!"

  With an effort of will that took all of his concentration, he lifted the spellstaff, thumbing the adjustment and pressing the activator stud. In this darkness the hairline thin beam that leaped from the tip glowed softly pink. The light struck the blob of darkness, exploding it into a burst of ugly, briefly bright putrescence.

  More globs of cold dark spun down. They came at Teron, slamming their coldness at him. He fought a scream back in his throat and swept out with his staff. The pink beam reached and touched again. The bright bursts blinded him and he began to spin, weaving a circle of pink light around himself. Fingers of cold reached him and fell away; and then there was nothing.

  He found that he could see again. The radiance remained, but now it pulsed slowly and feebly. He stepped carefully forward, seeking the cold dark but finding none. The voice said into his mind: “They’ve gone for the moment, Teron.”

  He saw the source of the light now, a withered crone who, he recalled, had been sitting in the front row of the tavern-theater when he had given his performance earlier this night. She was on her knees, head hanging.

  “We must go. The hunters come. Help me, Teron.”

  He bent to scoop the frail body into his arms. He ran, directed by the crone’s voice, though whether it

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  reached him through his ears or his mind he could not tell. Their way led through one alley after another until they broke onto the dark piers reaching into the still waters of the Warm Sea.

  The glow had left the body in his arms but he felt life stirring still. The voice was faint. “That ship there on your right.”

  He found it and climbed to the deck. An open hatchway beckoned and he carried the crone down into the blackness of a cabin. Gently he laid the meager body on the floor, turned and closed the hatch.

  “No light,” the voice said. And now he knew it came through his ears; he could hear the dust of age in it. “The drig will lead them here.”

  Teron turned from the hatch. The crone glowed softly again, giving light enough for him to see the straggly hair being pulled free to reveal a bald head and a man’s features and incredible age.

  “Come closer. I must make sure you are Teron, spell- man of Korv?”

  “No,” he said. “I am Teron and I come from Korv. But I am only the spellmaker. My father is spellman, and my older brother is next in line.”

  “That is good. You do not lie to make your image glow more brightly! Tell me of the message that brought you here to Pirin.”

  He was being tested. He accepted this as he had accepted everything that had happened this night—with little question. A naturally skeptical man, he would wonder at this later; but now he knelt, keeping his voice low.

  “I was in Nisi. A seaman came to me with a tube of brass. Inside I found a message written on a kind of paper I have not seen since I studied the original epic of the Song of Vacor and Eldra. The message was in the ancient script of Erul.”

  “Ah! And that you read easily?”

  “As second son to the court spellman of Korv, my youth was necessarily spent in studying the legends of

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  all Zarza. Every written ancient tongue and script I know well enough.”

  “Then repeat the message.”

  Teron spoke, chanting in the long gone speech: “Teron of Korv, spellmaker, come to the Enchanted Rest Tavern in the port of Pirin. Give one performance to end at the eleventh hour of the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month. At the instant you finish, hurry into the alley behind the tavern and seek the glowing light. In the name of Eliff, it is so commanded.”

  “You are truly the one I seek! Listen closely, Teron. Be prepared to flee again. Your staff shattered only a few of the forces sent by Udrig.”

  Udrig! Had there been light enough, Teron’s skepticism would have been visible. But in this near darkness, in the rapidly dimming glow from the ancient body, his doubt faded as quickly as it had struck him; he could feel the wash of true fear.

  In the ancient legends Teron had read much of Udrig and of Eliff, but his scholar’s mind had never accepted Udrig as more than a symbolic foil for the equally symbolic Eliff.

  At this moment his stubbornly rational mind sought no logical meaning for the glow from the body nor for the cold blobs of darkness. He only knew that he felt an unaccustomed fear yet at the same time a reassuring warmth from the ancient one before him.

  He said, “I listen.”

  “You will go to Erul, Teron, should you escape the hunters. Remember this—on all Zarza, the need of Erul is greatest. Should Erul fall, our world will die. Remember, too, that beyond the Isle of Dule that cups Erul are the Whitelands. And there is the Gate with Udrig still imprisoned behind it. And there are the Guardians of the Gate...”

  The voice broke off but resumed quickly, though much fainter now. “Seek out Bator, scribe of Erul. It is he who guards the scroll that holds the seven verses written in the hand of Vacor himself.”

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  Silence fell and lengthened.

  “What am I to do once I find Bator?” Teron asked softly.

  The ancient body stirred. The glow waxed briefly bright. “You must succeed where I have failed. For long I have fought the forces of Udrig. But with each passing century they take more of my strength. Now I can fight no longer. I give the battle to your charge.”

  To Teron, the stilted, ancient form of speech seemed only natural coming from this ancient one. He said, “Succeed in doi
ng what?”

  “The living Seventh and Pandro, ruler of Erul, will explain to you. And the Seventh will help you seek out Bator and the scroll.”

  Teron s mind probed back, recalling the great epic of Erul, the Song of Vacor and Eldra. He said, with his first touch of doubt, “If a Seventh exists, what need is there of my puny powers?”

  “I have no time nor strength to explain. You will understand once you meet the Seventh.” The glow was only a faint haze. “If they fail to accept you quickly, tell them of my words, of the words of Rocan, the Old One.”

  The light flickered and flared briefly. “Do not fail, Teron!” The voice took on momentary strength. “If you should fail, Zarza will be no more than a dead cinder spinning around a frozen sun. And Udrig will once again sweep through the heavens, fattened and powerful, conquering until the very stars are gone and the universe itself is only black, cold emptiness. Seek to renew the power of Eliff as it was in the time of Vacor. For over the centuries, Eliff too has waned.”

  The body stirred. A hand moved feebly. Something disk shaped and hard yet with an unaccountable warmth pressed into Terons palm. “This token is all the power that remains to me. The drig have sucked away all else.”

  The voice stopped abruptly. Teron bent forward. Rocan, the Old One, Would speak no more. When he

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  touched where the glow had been, his fingers found only dust and a bit of tattered cloth.

  He rose, feeling the warmth from the disk in his palm and feeling a coldness filling the warmth of the cabin. With the cold was a new darkness, thick and tangible enough to reach icy fingers into his brain. Without conscious thought, he knew that the drig were seeking to drain his life force.

  He squeezed the disk, using its warmth to fight the cold. And a battle was joined inside him unlike any battle he had ever known or could ever have imagined. In his travels he had faced threats of death more times than one. But those threats had come from men, not from blobs of sentient darkness. He strained to bring his will up through the frozen mass of his mind. He sought more help from the disk and felt its warmth ebbing away.

  Then the small part of him that remained Teron of Korv broke briefly free. Into his mind sprang a single word—Vacor. It was release. From his memory surged words and verses from the Song. He sought for breath and cried put:

  “Eliffl Remember him you gave power!

  Remember Vacor, he of Erul!

  Remember those who carry his blood!”

  The darkness scattered. He could feel it regrouping to seek him once more. He shouted into the deep black:

  “... Vacor of the humped back and bent legs.

  Vacor, greatest wizard of Erul.

  Vacor, chanter of spells.

  Eliff, remember Vacor of Erul!”

  The words came from him in the ancient speech of Erul. Like tongues of heat the words joined one to the other and struck out, driving back the cold, forcing it to leave him free.

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  His body sank down, empty. He was alone but he was still afraid. Not of the cold darkness now, he realized. His fear was of inexplicable salvation.

  Later he might explain away this night by some twist of logic, but he could never explain it by reason. Always before he had managed somehow to find rational explanations for whatever he might see—from the spells of a wizard to the expertise of a mentaler. Even the powers of his father came primarily from the strange black box that never left his side; even as Teron’s lesser powers came from his spellstaff.

  Drig—his mind stumbled over the ancient, legendary word—drig had attacked him, and he had called out the words from an age-dusted myth and had been saved. He who had little belief even in Sidris, whom many called the Maker; he who scoffed at the existence of Shan and the other gods paid homage to by those who lived along the shores of the Warm Sea; he had called on Eliff in the name of Vacor! He shook his head in wonder and in fear.

  The only sound had been that of his own panting. Now he heard the soft pad of human feet. The hunters had found the ship. He stood, lifted by a surge of relief. Deadly they might be, but the hunters were men. And men he could understand.

  The disk clutched tightly in his hand, Teron moved to the hatch and eased it open. He slipped forward and peered carefully around. Two, armed with knives, were sliding over the near rail. A half dozen more showed in the half-dark of the wharf below. He lifted his spell- staff but kept his hand from the activator stud. If it hadn’t been for the Spellmaker’s Oath, he could have destroyed them all with a single lancing line of light. But his own death was not yet close enough; nor was there another here for him to protect.

  He took a step to his left, thinking to go around the hatch and aft. A voice cried, “There he is! Cut him off!”

  Three men appeared from darkness along the starboard rail. The pair forward closed swiftly in behind

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  him. Teron weighed the probabilities and raced aft, directly at the three running toward him. Their speed gave them less balance than the pair coming from the bow, and when he lifted his staff, they stumbled over themselves to get out of the way.

  Teron was through the opening between two of the stumbling bodies. “He’s getting away!” a voice from the rail shouted. A knife whistled a deadly song alongside his head. Another plucked at his blouse, where it bellied out from his side. He leaped to the rail and plunged down, away from the death whispers of the knives.

  Men might call it the Warm Sea, but it had chill enough. Teron felt the iciness close over him. He held the breath he had taken, kicking upward and away from the stem of the ship. He broke the surface with his face uppermost. Hooking his spellstaff to his carryall, he stuffed his lungs full of air and went down again. When need drove him upward, he lifted his head and looked back toward the ship. He had gained appallingly little distance.

  Perhaps he had gained nothing. His ears caught the slap of oars. A boatload of hunters was pulling from the dock toward him, six rowing with great strokes, two standing with throwing knives in their hands. He calculated their speed against his own ability to swim. For a time, perhaps, he would manage to stay beyond the aim of their knives. But quickly enough the chill water would sap his strength. He twisted about, seeking a way to trick them.

  The tiny hope he had mustered drained away. Directly ahead, at the edge of the harbor, loomed a fine three- masted ship. A single light showed, blinking as if signaling to those in the small boat—or as if mocking him.

  He grinned bitterly into the darkness. Sidris! Which way should he choose to end the career which had promised so much when he had left Korv two years ago —by drowning or by assassins’ knives?

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  n

  TERON TROD WATER a moment longer, cosseting his small reserve of strength. A jolt of fear struck him as he felt a probing into his mind. Drig again? He squeezed on the disk for reassurance—and felt nothing. His hand was empty. The disk would be on the sea bottom waiting for him to join it

  He reached into his reserve of strength to battle against the fingers probing his consciousness. One after another, he felt the barriers of his mind going down. He stopped fighting as he became aware that the probing was not the cold fingering of the drig. Here was a gentle warmth, an almost tentative touching. Deliberately, he dropped the last barrier.

  “Teron. Ship. Rope....”

  Hesitant the thoughts might be, but they came clearly to his tired mind. They beckoned even as Rocan’s had done. And in the same fashion, Teron answered, not daring to use time in questioning. There was no choice. It was a matter of simple survival.

  The small boat was near enough for him to see the night gleam on the knife in the closest hunter’s hand. Drawing in air, Teron let himself slide beneath the quiet surface. He twisted about and swam in the direction he judged the ship to be. Once he came to the top to seek air and to orient himself. The towering side of the ship was less than ten yards ahead. The small boat st
ill came toward him, but slowly now as if sniffing for his presence.

  “Teron. Rope. Hurry.”

  He went down again and kicked himself forward, arms reaching. His fingers scraped against the rough underbelly of the ship and he let himself rise to the surface. A thick rope hung down from the deck just yards on his right. Behind him and coming swiftly now,

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  the hunters were poised, their knives ready for throwing.

  Teron stroked to the rope. His sore fingers reached and grasped. He made a single effort to draw himself up. He fell back, the last of his strength drained from his muscles.

  “Hold tightly!”

  Now the voice was in his ears, a male voice, used to commanding. He felt the rope starting up and he squeezed his hands frantically around it.

  Behind Teron a voice said with thick pleasure, “Hold the rowing. He’ll be a fine target soon.”

  The commanding voice came again from above. “All right, men!”

  A whining and then snapping sound from the deck struck Teron’s ears. He heard the rush of air as a heavy object passed over his head. Twisting his neck, he saw a large stone complete its arc and start downward. The hunters shouted their surprise and leaped for the water. The stone crashed just aft of the boat, half swamping it.

  The rope moved more quickly, drawing Teron to the deck like a gasping fish before the hunters ’ could get back into their boat. He felt hands prying his fingers from the rope and others drawing him gently to his feet. He took a single step and staggered against the small catapult that had hurled the stone. He remembered the feeling of its hardness against his side. Beyond that lay only warm darkness.

  Awareness of waking came slowly. At first he knew only that he still breathed. Then a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar scents mingled in his nose—the smell of a ship and the rich fragrance of freshly brewed kaffe. These he knew. But there was a scent he couldn’t place. It carried a suggestion of spice, a hint of warmly fragrant tropic gardens and a tinge of the coolness of an autumn evening. He opened his eyes and saw a woman’s face.

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