The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [206]
Wheee…Gairloch kept moving, if slowly.
“I know. It wasn’t exactly my idea, either.”
Farther ahead in the grass to the right of the road were some more white fragments. I glanced from the ghosts to the bones and the tattered leathers. My eyes scanned the rest of the high grass, glimpsing a few other remnants of other travelers.
The bones were real. So not all of the figures could be illusions; but were they all real? My senses didn’t say, because the blankness that enclosed the pass ahead foiled that. Still…I grinned, half-scared, half-elated, and flicked the reins, then dropped them on the saddle, grabbing the staff with both hands as Gairloch trotted toward the knight and I bounced along with him.
The knight’s lance came up slowly, almost as if drawn toward the staff, the white tip glinting in the light, red behind the white of chaos.
Whhhhsttt…A line of fire flew toward me, spattering off my staff.
Thumpedy, thump…Gairloch carried me toward the lance.
Whhhhsssttt…The second fire-line curved toward us, again spraying around me.
Thunk…thunk…I knocked the slow-moving lance aside, then struck the rear flank of the white horse.
Hssssttt…
Holding the staff in my left hand, I grabbed the reins and yanked Gairloch to a halt. Like a snuffed candle, the other white apparitions had vanished, leaving only the knight and horse—which, as I watched, sagged into a heap on the road, dwindling in size until only a pile of copper armor remained; that, and a long wooden lance with a still-sharpened tip.
The dead zone remained, and I could sense nothing, except with my eyes. Nor could I hear anything, no bird calls, no whistle of the wind, not the slightest of insect chirps or whines.
“Come on…let’s get moving.”
Gairloch didn’t object as we rode into the narrow space. My eyes flicked from one smooth wall to the other, from the smooth stone in front of me to the cliff edges above, to the sky over that. All it would take would be one large falling rock—there was nowhere to go.
Then, again, if Antonin blocked the road, he would only have to unblock it, and who but an idiot would challenge the ghost horde?
I looked back and shivered. Slowly, a mist was building around the copper armor.
“Let’s keep moving.”
A lot of energy had been used to set up that defense, and all I had done was to bypass it; not even contain it, just get through it.
Once the high rock walls dropped away on each side, so did my inability to sense what I might not see. Gairloch had carried me nearly a kay further into the Westhorns.
Again, I glanced back, but the knight was out of sight. So was the white horde. But they were waiting, mindlessly, for the next travelers.
The beauty of the defense was that what happened didn’t matter. Some people died. Some escaped, but the deaths and the tales of those who did escape added to Antonin’s strength and people’s desire to keep as far away from the haunted road as possible. With war between Gallos and Kyphros, who was about to send enough talent and force to clean up an unused wizards’ road?
Yeee—ahh…
The vulcrow’s ugly call reminded me to stop woolgathering and start concentrating again.
I did. That was a mistake, because I asked myself what I was doing on the road in the first place, or the second place, for that matter. Antonin had brushed me aside like nothing. And if my dreams were to be trusted, he had even trapped Tamra, who had been far warier and more capable than I. So what was I doing riding toward his stronghold?
“What am I doing?” I repeated out loud.
Wheeee…uhhh…That was Gairloch’s only reply, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other, as if he had no choice.
Maybe that was the answer, the only answer. With all the deaths, and all the sacrifices, maybe I really didn’t have much-choice either. I didn’t like that thought, either, since it made my stomach tighten up, and that meant I did have a choice.
Some choice—cut and run like all the other black masters had for so long; or, probably, get incinerated by the greatest white wizard in generations. That was a