“Wretched man, I know how to make you speak. If your mouth were stuffed, waxed and sealed, you would speak! Tomorrow I take a nerve from your arm and draw coarse cloth along its length.”
The small Turjan sitting with his legs across the passageway, drank his water and said nothing.
“Tonight,” said Mazirian with studied malevolence, “I add an angle and change your run to a pentagon.”
Turjan paused and looked up through the glass cover at his enemy. Then he slowly sipped his water. With five angles there would be less time to evade the charge of the monster, less of the hall in view from one angle.
“Tomorrow,” said Mazirian, “you will need all your agility.” But another matter occurred to him. He eyed Turjan speculatively. “Yet even this I spare you if you assist me with another problem.”
“What is your difficulty, febrile Magician?”
“The image of a woman-creature haunts my brain, and I would capture her.” Mazirian’s eyes went misty at the thought. “Late afternoon she comes to the edge of my garden riding a great black horse — you know her, Turjan?”
“Not I, Mazirian.” Turjan sipped his water.
Mazirian continued. “She has sorcery enough to ward away Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell — or perhaps she has some protective rune. When I approach, she flees into the forest.”
“So then?” asked Turjan, nibbling the meat Mazirian had provided.
“Who may this woman be?” demanded Mazirian, peering down his long nose at the tiny captive.
“How can I say?”
“I must capture her,” said Mazirian abstractedly: “What spells, what spells?”
Turjan looked up, although he could see the Magician only indistinctly through the cover of glass.
“Release me, Mazirian, and on my word as a Chosen Hierarch of the Maram-Or, I will deliver you this girl.”
“How would you do this?” asked the suspicious Mazirian.
“Pursue her into the forest with my best Live Boots and a headful of spells.”
“You would fare no better than I,” retorted the Magician. “I give you freedom when I know the synthesis of your vat-things. I myself will pursue the woman.”
Turjan lowered his head that the Magician might not read his eyes.
“And as for me, Mazirian?” he inquired after a moment.
“I will treat with you when I return.”
“And if you do not return?”
Mazirian stroked his chin and smiled, revealing fine white teeth. “The dragon could devour you now, if it were not for your cursed secret.”
The Magician climbed the stairs. Midnight found him in his study, poring through leather-bound tomes and untidy portfolios … At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam — Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East — swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated — though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Pontecilla the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others.
Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal’s Gyrator, Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Mazirian drank wine and retired to his couch.
The following day, when the sun hung low, Mazirian went to walk in his garden. He had but short time to wait. As he loosened the earth at the roots of his moon-geraniums a soft rustle and stamp told that the object of his desire had appeared.
She sat upright in the saddle, a young woman of exquisite configuration. Mazirian slowly stooped, as not to startle her, put his feet into the Live Boots and secured them above the knee.
He stood up. “Ho girl,” he cried, “you have come again. Why are you here of evenings? Do you admire the roses? They are vividly red because live red blood flows in their petals. If today you do not flee, I will make you the gift of one.”
Mazirian plucked a rose from the shuddering bush and advanced toward her, fighting the surge of the Live Boots. He had taken but four steps when the woman dug her knees into the ribs of her mount and so plunged off through the trees.
Mazirian allowed full scope to the life in his boots. They gave a great bound, and another, and another and he was off in full chase.
So Mazirian entered the forest of fable. On all sides mossy boles twisted up to support the high panoply of leaves. At intervals shafts of sunshine drifted through to lay carmine blots on the turf. In the shade long-stemmed flowers and fragile fungi sprang from the humus; in this ebbing hour of Earth nature was mild and relaxed.
Mazirian in his Live Boots bounded with great speed through the forest, yet the black horse, running with no strain, stayed easily ahead.
For several leagues the woman rode, her hair flying behind like a pennon. She looked back and Mazirian saw the face over her shoulder as a face in a dream. Then she bent forward; the golden-eyed horse thundered ahead and soon was lost to sight. Mazirian followed by tracing the trail in the sod.
The spring and drive began to leave the Live Boots, for they had come far and at great speed. The monstrous leaps became shorter and heavier, but the strides of the horse, shown by the tracks, were also shorter and slower. Presently Mazirian entered a meadow and saw the horse, riderless, cropping grass. He stopped short. The entire expanse of tender herbiage lay before him. The trail of the horse leading into the glade was clear, but there was no trail leaving. The woman therefore had dismounted somewhere behind — how far he had no means of knowing. He walked toward the horse, but the creature shied and bolted through the trees. Mazirian made one effort to follow, and discovered that his Boots hung lax and flaccid — dead.
He kicked them away, cursing the day and his ill-fortune. Shaking the cloak free behind him, a baleful tension shining on his face, he started back along the trail.
In this section of the forest, outcroppings of black and green rock, basalt and serpentine, were frequent — fore-runners of the crags over the River Derna. On one of these rocks Mazirian saw a tiny man-thing mounted on a dragon-fly. He had skin of a greenish cast; he wore a gauzy smock and carried a lance twice his own length.
Mazirian stopped. The Twk-man looked down stolidly.
“Have you seen a woman of my race passing by, Twk-man?”
“I have seen such a woman,” responded the Twk-man after a moment of deliberation.
“Where may she be found?”
