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they met the thin dark line of the sea. The causeway had also risen in
altitude; until now, where they stood, they were perhaps twenty feet above the
level of the surrounding landscape. Far ahead to the west, the sky was on fire
with sunset. It lighted all the fens, the meres and the causeway with a red
glow which lay bloodily on earth and grass and stunted trees; and it pooled
just ahead, around a low hill, at a rise of a hundred feet or more above the
seashore where, touched but uncolored by that same dying light there loomed
over all, amongst great, tumbled boulders, the ruined, dark and shattered
shell of a tower as black as jet.
Chapter Twenty-one
This much and little more they saw in the brief minute or so that the light
lasted, for the sun was on the very lip of the sea horizon and went down as
they watched. Night true night, this time came in from the east in one swift
stride.
Carolinus had been bending over something on the ground beside his staff. A
little flame now leaped up beneath his hands; and going a little off to one
side, he brought back some dry branches fallen from one of the causeway's
dwarfed trees. He threw these on the flame, and a fire blazed up, lighting and
warming them.
"We're still within the circle of strength of theLoathlyTower ," said the
magician. "Stay within ten paces of the wand if you care to be sure of your
own safety!"
Tucking up his robe, he sat down cross-legged before the fire.
"Lie down, Sir knight," he said, "and you, too, my enchanted friend. When
that sun comes up again, you'll find you'll need all the rest you've been able
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to get."
Brian obeyed willingly enough, but Jim sank reluctantly to the ground by the
fire.
"What about Angie?" he asked. "We haven't seen any sign of Bryagh. Do you
suppose ?"
"Your damsel's in the tower," Carolinus interrupted him,
"In there?" Jim started up. "I've got to "
"Sit down! She's perfectly safe and comfortable, I promise you," said
Carolinus, testily. "The forces in strife here don't center around her not for
the present, at least."
He winced, and reached into his robes to produce a flask and a small cup made
of cloudy glass. He poured white liquid from the flask into the cup and sipped
it.
"What the devil?" said Brian, staring.
"How do you know?" Jim demanded of the magician. "How can you tell ?"
"By the Powers!" snapped Carolinus. "I'm a Master of the Arts. How do I know?
Forsooth!"
"Pardon me," said Brian, his blue eyes staring. "Is thatmilk you're drinking,
Mage?"
"A bit of a sympathetic magic, Sir knight, for an ulcer-demon that's been
plaguing me lately."
"Tell me how!" Jim asked again.
"I should think there'd be danger of it giving you a flux," said Brian,
frowning. "Children, now& "
"I will not tell you!" exploded Carolinus. "Did I spend sixty years to get my
degree, only to be demanded an account of my methods at every turn? If I say
Saturn is in the ascendant, Saturnis in the ascendant. And if I say the maiden
is perfectly safe and comfortable, then the maiden is perfectly safe and
comfortable. By the Powers!"
He snorted indignantly to himself.
"Listen to me, my young friend," he went on to Jim, draining his cup and
tucking it with the flask back out of sight in his robes, "you may have a
little kitchen knowledge of Art and Science, but don't let that give you
delusions of understanding. You're here for a purpose, which comes into
operation after sunrise tomorrow just like this knight."
"I, too, Mage?" inquired Brian.
"Do you think you just happened to run into our mutual friend, here?"
Carolinus asked. "You laymen always think of Chance as a random operative
factor. Nonsense! The operations of Chance follow the most rigid rules in the
universe. Chance is invariably determined by the point of greatest stress
between the other Prime Operators, such as History and Nature particularly
History and Nature, I might say, since as any fool knows, their particular
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strife makes changes in the pattern almost hourly. Otherwise, the universe
would become so orderly we'd all die of sheer boredom. Listen to me, then "
He pointed a long, bony forefinger at Jim.
"Nature is always at work to establish a balance of factors, which the
operation of History is as unfailingly and continuously at work to disturb.
The rub to all this lies in the fact that the new balance may always be
established at more than one point, and it is in the determination of exactly
which point that Chance as a compensating element enters the equation. This
truth is the basis on which all magic, as a product of Art and Science, is
constructed.Now do you understand the situation we have here?"
"No," said Jim.
"Oh, go to sleep!" cried Carolinus, throwing up his arms in exasperation.
Jim blinked...
... And it was morning.
He sat up in amazement and found himself yawning. On the other side of the
staff his wand, as Carolinus had called it Brian was also sitting up with a
look of surprise. Carolinus was already on his feet.
"What happened?" asked Jim.
"I sent you to sleep. What d'you think happened?" retorted Carolinus. He
produced his flask and cup, poured himself some milk and drank it down, making
a face. "I'm beginning to hate this stuff," he grumbled, putting the utensils
back out of sight again. "Still, there's no doubt it's working. Come now!"
He turned snappishly on Jim and Brian.
"On your feet! The sun's been up for an hour and a half and our forces are
strongest when the sun is in the ascendant which means, we have our best
chance of conquering before midday."
"Why didn't you wake us up earlier, then?" asked Jim, getting to his feet as
Brian also rose.
"Because we had to wait for them to catch up with us."
"Them? What them?" asked Jim. "Who's going to catch up with us?"
"If Iknew who, exactly," said Carolinus, gnawing on his beard, "I'd havesaid
who. All I know is that the situation this morning implies that four more will
join our party Oh, so they're the ones!"
He was staring over Jim's shoulder. Jim turned and saw the approaching forms
of Dafydd and Danielle, followed by two dragon shapes a little farther down
the causeway.
"Well, well Master Bowman!" said Brian, heartily, as Dafydd came up. "And
Mistress Danielle! Good morning!"
"A morrow it is, but whether good or not, I'd not wish to guess," said
Dafydd. He looked around. "Where is the wolf, Sir knight?"
A cloud crossed Brian's face.
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"You haven't seen him?" Jim asked. "You must have passed him. Some
ordinary-sized sandmirks and one particularly large one caught us, and he
stayed behind to fight the large one. You must have passed the place where we
left them fighting."
"Left them?" cried Danielle.
"It was the wolf demanded it," said Brian, grimly. "We wouldn't have left,
otherwise as I think you might know, mistress!"
"We saw neither him, nor any sign of sandmirks or battle," said Dafydd.
Jim stood silent. It was like absorbing a hard blow to the stomach to hear
this, for all that he thought he had faced the fact the day before that he
might never see Aragh alive again.
"Just because he asked you," Danielle said, fiercely, "you didn't have to
leave him alone to face "
"Danielle," Carolinus interrupted. She turned to face him.
"Mage!" she said. "You here? But you were a hundred years old even when I was
little. You shouldn't be here!"
"I am where I must be," said Carolinus. "As was your wolf; as are Sir James
and Sir Brian. Accuse them not. It was the task of Aragh to stay and fight
alone, so that these two could come to this place at this time. That's all, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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