A Tapestry of Magics Read online

  Brian Daley

  A Tapestry of Magics

  - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -

  Thanks to Alice Marriott and her wonderful Saynday’s People for an introduction to the Trickster. And to Jeff Pagano for tolerance and friendship. My gratitude to Hilton Berger, soldier and scholar, connoisseur of old liquor and young women, for his interest, advice, and friendship.

  “And all my days are trances,

  And all my nightly dreams

  Are where thy grey eye glances,

  And where thy footstep gleams—

  In what ethereal dances,

  By what eternal streams.”

  TO ONE IN PARADISE

  Edgar Allan Poe

  - PART I –

  * * *

  IN ALL PROBABILITIES…

  Chapter 1

  AT HAZARD

  The dead man lay face down in a patch of plants that looked like masses of translucent bulbs, one of the lizard riders’ two-pronged steel darts standing out from his back. Like all the others in his army, he wore a uniform bearing the strange insignia:

  A supremely unsatisfactory way to spend eternity, Crassmor thought, stepping around him. To be a corpse is to be nothing more than an addition to the general clutter.

  This one had lost helmet and field pack; his rifle, with fixed bayonet, rested near him. Crassmor saw no other corpses in the immediate area and concluded that the man had wandered away from his unit or been chased and harried by the lizard riders, who dearly loved such sport. The soldier had been dead for some time; tiny scavengers—multilegged mites—swarmed over him like a black, moving skin. A number of small, scuttling reptiles were feasting too.

  Crassmor was relieved to see that the claw tracks of the savages’ lizards were old. He wasn’t far from the huge main camp, and it was absolutely imperative that he not be discovered. The aspirant knight led two horses, making his way around a thorn hill. He was very careful to keep well clear of the impenetrable tangle of thick, purple vines with their foot-long, poisonous spikes. The thorn hills harbored creatures of their own strange subworld, prey and predators alike, who’d adapted to the deadly thickets for shelter and sustenance. A swarm of little animals shaped like living airscrews flew by overhead.

  Crassmor left the two mounts, Kort and Bordhall, to wait for him while he sought to edge around the thorn hill and look down at the enemy camp. Kort, the stallion, and his dam, Bordhall, extremely intelligent and perfectly trained, would wait there for him or come if he summoned them. They lowered their heads now to crop at the coarse, sparse clumps of red-yellow grass which grew intermittently all across the landscape. Crassmor had been grateful that the horses could forage here; the supply of feed he’d brought into the Beyonds was exhausted.

  He lowered himself onto his stomach, the moss and grass rubbing against his haubergeon, his sword bumping against his back. He drew himself just around the edge of the looming thorn hill.

  The barbarians seemed to be celebrating, judging from sounds of revelry drifting up from the enormous camp. As well they might, he thought to himself. From all signs, they were doing well in their war against the broken-cross soldiers and controlled most of the alien wilderness which now occupied this entire area of the Beyonds. The wilderness was part of the barbarians’ home Reality, having come into existence in the Beyonds when they’d entered it. The lizard riders’ shaman had opened a way from their home Reality into the Beyonds as an avenue of invasion. Their avowed purpose was to make their way through the Beyonds in order to conquer the Singularity, Crassmor’s home.

  Now the aspirant knight watched smoke curl up from victory fires and heard savage lizard riders roaring, singing, laughing, and shouting boisterously. He tried without success to spot his brother Sandur, the Outrider, among the warriors. Crassmor was not surprised; the camp stretched away toward the horizon, teaming with tens of thousands of men and their vicious reptilian mounts. He gnawed his lower lip and worried. He’d been staying as close to the camp as possible for days now, against the moment when his brother might need help in escaping. The previous evening, though, Crassmor had found himself with no choice but to withdraw into nearby hills and hide, as patrol activity around the camp was stepped up. More contingents had entered and left the place, apparently in connection with some major battle.

  In his pouch was a small red bead of crystal, mate to one carried by Sandur. The crystals had been prepared by Daldoor, one of the Singularity’s best artificers. The crystals had, when near enough to one another, the property of empathy. If one were shattered, Daldoor had assured them, the other would fall to dust. That was to be the signal from Sandur that he’d been forced to try to flee, or from Crassmor that the lizard riders had discovered him. Crassmor had checked his crystal only a short time before, finding it whole, but feared that in withdrawing he’d gone beyond the limits of the crystals’ communion. The thought that Sandur’s signal might have gone unregistered by Crassmor’s crystal tormented the younger brother.

  He crept backward now and stood up when he was safely out of sight of the camp. He was tall and slender, not quite nineteen years old. His movements were limber, but not as assertive as those of most Knights of Onn. His hair was a pale red, fine and thin, shaping him a high, white brow, making him look older than he was. His eyes were a watery blue and his face asthetic, not as strong of jaw as Sandur’s. His facial hair was sparse; he followed the custom of shaving it, but did not have to do so often.

  He had on a light haubergeon of woven mesh; the hilt of his sword, Shhing, a heavy cavalry rapier whose scabbard was held to his back by a broad leather baldric, extended up over his left shoulder. He wore a light blouse, durable buckskin jerkin and trousers, and knee-high boots. He’d removed his sallet helm with his House Tarrant device of a phoenix on its crest and left it fastened to his saddle on Kort. Now he put a hand on the pommel of his basket-hilted parrying dagger and thought.

  He dared go no closer to the camp. To be captured or even sighted would mean ruin. The thought of stealing into the enemy camp was dismissed at once. Crassmor had no reliable way to insure the well-being of Kort and Bordhall while he was gone, and the horses would be absolutely necessary if he and the Outrider were required to make a run for their lives. Crassmor was racked by the thought that he might have missed the signal of the crystals and that Sandur might be dead or undergoing the cruel treatments dispensed by the lizard riders to their captives.

  Despairing, Crassmor found a moment in which to regret that some more capable, decisive man hadn’t been chosen to accompany Sandur into the Beyonds. It was a pointless regret; there were only three people who could handle Kort and Bordhall adequately: Combard, their father, whose vested powers and affinities kept him tied closely to the Singularity; Sandur, who’d trained the horses under his father’s watchful eye; and Crassmor, who’d been at Sandur’s side through most of that training and had the horses grow used to his hand.

  Crassmor dipped into the pouch at his belt, drawing out a tiny, padded bag. He loosened the carefully knotted drawstring and made to pour the crystal out onto his palm, as he had so often since Sandur had entered the camp. A stream of pulverized red powder flowed from the bag, some of it collecting on his leather-gloved palm, the rest carried away by the wind. Crassmor gaped at it in numb horror.

  Then he broke his paralysis with a wordless cry. He threw himself onto his belly once more, peering down at the camp. He saw a figure dashing away from it at desperate speed. It didn’t occur to him to doubt; he knew it was Sandur. Without quite realizing how he’d gotten there, Crassmor was in Kort’s saddle, taking up his lance and long, triangular shield. He seized Bordhall’s rein—though he little doubted that she would follow just as faithfully if he didn’t—and was off.


  It was no lizard rider sprinting full out from the camp of the barbarian hordes. They were easy to identify by their odd, wildly varied trappings and exotic weapons. The man running for his life across the gritty soil was dressed in the uniform Crassmor remembered, taken from one of the broken-cross soldiers captured by Singularity scouts. It was the black dress uniform of jodhpurs and tunic, high boots and red armband, of the—what had the captive called them?—Blackshirts. The fleeing man had lost, or left behind, his black cap. Loose soil sprayed into the air behind his flying heels. Now men came running from the tent lines of the lizard riders’ camp, waving greatswords and two-pronged lances, seeking his life.

  Sandur had a good start, though. Leading Bordhall down-slope to rescue his brother, Crassmor saw that he was running in good form and seemed to be unharmed. The Outrider was tall, long-limbed, and brawny. The looks of Combard of Tarrant were more strongly evident in him than in Crassmor. Sandur’s gritted teeth showed through a beard like new copper; his red mane flew behind him. He skirted a clump of strange shrubbery that resembled green glass fiddleheads, then hurdled a squat, needle-guarded, rock-hard water plant.

  Sandur had a good lead on those who were chasing him and had never lost a footrace since coming of age. The barbarians yelled wild war cries; Sandur lengthened the distance between himself and them. Crassmor charged down at the gallop, leading Bordhall.

  A new element entered the deadly race. A mounted lizard rider was pressing through the running mass of his fellows, making good headway. From the distance another barbarian bore in, a sentry. Whoops of encouragement went up from the running savages, urging their comrades on. The one coming through the pack brandished his lance, calling out threats to Sandur, narrowing the distance between them. With his other hand, he played on his control whistle, sending his mount into a battle frenzy. The whistle was pitched above human hearing, though its vibrations could be felt. Sandur could also hear the rider’s mocking whoops and the hiss of his mount.

  The Outrider whirled, dropping to one knee, yanking from its holster the weapon that went with the captive’s uniform. Sandur had been forced to go into the camp armed with only the captive’s pistol and dress dagger; bearing his own cut-and-thrust broadsword would have betrayed the masquerade. Sandur—and Crassmor—had disliked that part of the plan as much as any other; weapons and devices from other Realities had a way of malfunctioning or otherwise failing those not used to them.

  Now Sandur held up the pistol, aiming at the lizard rider with little skill. The weapon cracked and cracked, its reports sounding flat in the open country. Beast and rider were so close that Sandur could scarcely miss. The beast threw its head back and shrilled as two bullets found its chest, another its pinkish underbelly as it reared. Its rider threw his head up too, the black plaits of his beard whipping, his horned headpiece flying loose, dropping his lance as a lucky shot hit him. Crassmor saw his brother turn and spy the other mounted barbarian.

  Sandur brought the pistol around, making to fire, but no shots came. He worked the weapon’s toggle once or twice. Giving up on the jammed weapon, he cast it aside and began running again. The lizard rider, this one wearing a fantastic animal mask, bore in at him. The lizards could move very quickly in straight dashes, but were less adept at turns. Sandur dodged to one side and the reptile pounded past, the lance missing him by inches. The barbarian laughed and jeered, coming around for another attack.

  Sandur had been so preoccupied with his flight that he hadn’t seen his brother approaching, nor had the barbarian. Crassmor, steeling himself, rode in on an oblique course, dropping Bordhall’s rein, knowing the mare would follow her training and use good sense.

  The lizard rider saw Crassmor and tried to bring his lance around. The barbarian dropped his control whistle in his haste to snatch up a gleaming, polychrome lizard-hide shield from his saddlebow. The lance had two heads, long and bright and wavy-bladed in the fashion Crassmor had heard called flamboyant. Crassmor crouched, gripping his own sturdy lance, shield braced, clutching with his knees and leaning in to strike at what he prayed to be the right moment. He did it all with a feeling of unreality, pushed to this sudden, madly determined attack by danger to Sandur. Both lances missed, but the barbarian, taken by surprise, nearly lost his saddle in the effort to avoid Crassmor’s blow. Like all of his kind that Crassmor had seen, the man was dark-haired and light-skinned, somewhat shorter than Crassmor, but powerfully built.

  The man jerked hard on his lizard’s nose reins, whirling the beast around painfully. Crassmor could smell the grease and sweat on him, see every detail of body harness, bracelets, and armbands, and smell the reek from his mount’s femoral pores. The lizard was a big, scarred brute with keeled, pointed scales, gleaming black and brown on its back and sides, green on its underbelly. It snapped at the horse. Kort reared, nimbly avoiding the bite, striking out with sharp-shod hooves, opening a long gash in the great prefrontal scales on the lizard’s snout. The creature shied back; Crassmor withdrew.

  Sandur was ahorse now. He snatched up his shield, which Crassmor had fastened to Bordhall’s saddle. Sandur had no lance, though, since it would have made awkward carrying for Bordhall. Crassmor reined around, preparing to gallop for it. Sandur blocked his way, yelling, “Give me your lance!”

  The lizard rider had drawn back for a moment, taken by surprise at Crassmor’s appearance, unsure if this were some ambush. The barbarian would see the truth of it in a moment, though, and there were now other sentries converging on them, more lizard riders streaming from the camp. Crassmor shouted, “Sandur, you can’t—”

  “Lance!” he roared. His eyes, darker than Crassmor’s, flashed. He guided Bordhall with his knees, holding out his free hand. Crassmor had seen this look on his brother’s face before. The Outrider had been mocked and nearly killed by an alien savage; he would not stand for that. Used to obeying, Crassmor passed the weapon over. Sandur heeled Bordhall’s sides. She launched herself at the barbarian, who in turn came at the knight. Crassmor divided his attention between the impromptu joust and the oncoming reinforcements, agonizing.

  Knight and lizard rider came together with a crash. The shaft of the two-pronged lance splintered. Sandur’s spear drove through the barbarian’s guard, lifting him back out of his saddle, his sandaled feet driven from his tasseled stirrups. The lance head punched through an ornamental pauldron made from insect carapace, passing through the barbarian’s shoulder and lodging there. Falling, the lizard rider pulled the lance from Sandur’s grip. The reptilian mount hunkered away from Bordhall, its blood still flowing from the wound Kort had given it.

  There was no time to recover the lance. At Sandur’s subtle command, Bordhall reared, turning away, leaving the bleeding enemy and his wounded mount where they were.

  The other lizard riders were closing in, already casting their darts. Crassmor could feel the silent birring of their control whistles as they urged their animals to battle frenzy. “Come!” Sandur bade as he raced past.

  He needn’t have worried. Crassmor was already digging heels into Kort. The pair fled up the long rise with precious little lead. Kort and Bordhall were fresh, though; faster than the reptiles. Crassmor was thankful that the horses had seen good use and were in trim, and that the coarse grass hadn’t put any weight on them. There wouldn’t be much opportunity to stop and tighten saddle girths, not for some time to come. They topped the rise to find the way open; their lead over the vengeful savages increased.

  All of which would be wonderful, Crassmor realized in dismay, if we weren’t headed in the wrong direction!

  They rode hard through the long afternoon, sometimes over bare ground which would hold their tracks, sometimes over thick, springy, tough plants or hard soil which wouldn’t. This part of the Beyonds was lit, as was the lizard riders’ home Reality, by a purple-white sun.

  They broke their trail many times on stone and on shifting sand meadows. They made for hillier, broken country where they would be more difficult for pursuers to spy. They
hid twice in folds in the land, deep washes from the brief rainy season, as large enemy units rode in the direction of the main camp, not looking for Singularity fugitives.

  Toward evening they came to a place Crassmor had found previously, a clearing like a little inlet in the middle of one of the thorn hills, reachable through a narrow passage. Working carefully with sword and gauntlets, Crassmor had managed to put together a sort of screen to block the entrance. There they stopped.

  Crassmor had brought along a change of clothes for Sandur, and his sword and shield and bow. Sandur retained the boots and jodhpurs of the Blackshirt officer. He threw aside the black leather belt-and-shoulder-strap harness and began unbuttoning his tunic. Crassmor eyed the discarded harness. Both holster and sheath were empty. “When you fired that weapon I was surprised, brother. I didn’t think the savages would let you keep the thing.”

  Sandur grinned, tossed the tunic aside, and began pulling at his black necktie. “They didn’t. The dagger named Solingen they left me, accounting it no great danger. The pistol the shaman took. He’d seen those devices before.”

  Crassmor was puzzled. “Where, then, is the Solingen?”

  Sandur had cast aside the tie, following it with the brown shirt. He was ducking into a quilted gambeson. “In the shaman, last I saw. There was much going on when I killed him; I didn’t have time to recover it.” He was lacing the gambeson, settling it comfortably with great care. A wrinkle or fold could become extremely irritating under armor. Sandur grimaced. “I recovered that Luger thing, though, and it let me down. A lesson: alien weapons are not for the likes of us, not if we can avoid them. It’s not the first time I almost got killed using one. I mislike them.”

  “But the shaman?”

  Sandur was grim. “Smelled me out. He was the First shaman, their best, the one who opened the way from their home Reality into the Beyonds. He suspected me all along. He’d asked me more than once about the red crystal I carried, Daldoor’s. I said it was only a lucky piece; the Warlord accepted that.”