the iron-gray crawl of the sea; above and before him, half-veiled with beggar-rags of cloud, was the cold arc of the waxing moon. Around him whispered and cried the voices of the winds, and in the blackness he saw them, dark and light air mixed, warm and cold. He could see the cold front moving in like a blue-gray wall, smell the ozone of the lightning, and hear the driving thunder of its rain. Reaching out toward them, he touched them, the winds flowing at his call into his hands.
In a dream, he thought, he might once have felt this. It was both less and more than ecstasy—wholeness, the sensation of being exactly and perfectly what from the beginning of time he had been meant and longed to be. In a dream, or perhaps on certain nights when training his warriors, he had felt the whole body of them answering like a single blazing weapon forged of souls. The winds streamed through his hands, the colors of them visible through the incense smoke, palpable as rippling bolts of silk that he could weave, braid, and twist to his will. Throughout his life he had lied, claiming to revel most in the joys common to other men, knowing none would understand because he did not understand himself. But in his heart of hearts, nothing—not sex, not love, not wealth or drink or victory, had ever come remotely close to this, for which there was no word but magic.
His soul filled with the bright darkness of it, and he put forth his shadow strength to turn the storm aside. Its power pressed on him, like a wild horse on a breaking line or a sail held in a squall, twisting him, dragging him after it. His magic was insufficient yet, untrained, without technique; he drew against the wind, collecting his strength, trying to remember everything Yirth had taught him . . .
Then he became aware of something in the wind and darkness besides himself.
Blue like clouds, black like the cold of the air, he seemed to see it through curtain after curtain of illusions. It, too, moved beyond and through the Invisible Circle. It, too, gathered the reins of the wind. The shape of it came and went, edges vanishing, melting, yet always there—in his mind, in the clouds, in the winds, he couldn’t tell. But it seemed that a dark hand stretched out toward him in a universe of shadow, darkness streaming from its bony fingers.
And in his mind he heard the whisper, A little wizardling, is it? A fledgling mage to be my slave.
Frightened, Sun Wolf tried to draw away, but realized he was too deep within the trance he’d entered in working the weather to escape. The shadow hand moved, sketching signs woven of the storms’ lightning, runes weaving a shivering net of ice. Fight!
the Wolf thought, but he had no idea how to do so—it was his soul that was being trapped, through the trance, through his own magic, not his body. The runes merged, blended with one another as on a curtain of silk billowing in the dark air all around him, a shining web drawing closer, while his mind screamed No! No!
and a thunderclap of voiceless, ecstatic laughter rocked the darkness with triumphant delight.
And as if remembering a dream, it came to him that he’d seen that dark hand before, a dream—just before the fire at the inn?—of the hand reaching toward him . . .
Wake up!
he screamed at himself. Break the trance, damn you! But he had no idea how to do that, either. Trailing the silvery darkness like sticky grave-bands, the hand seemed to grow enormously, the long fingers extending to close him in. Without a body he could not fight. He screamed, I will not serve you . . . and laughter again whispered like a chuckle of thunder.
Wizardling, you will have no choice.
In the deeps of his trance he could not reach the refuge of his own body, but, like a fragment of a forgotten dream, he conjured a vision to himself, a vision he’d had first as a child, and later in the hallucinatory agonies of the Great Trial: the vision of his own right hand with the
In a dream, he thought, he might once have felt this. It was both less and more than ecstasy—wholeness, the sensation of being exactly and perfectly what from the beginning of time he had been meant and longed to be. In a dream, or perhaps on certain nights when training his warriors, he had felt the whole body of them answering like a single blazing weapon forged of souls. The winds streamed through his hands, the colors of them visible through the incense smoke, palpable as rippling bolts of silk that he could weave, braid, and twist to his will. Throughout his life he had lied, claiming to revel most in the joys common to other men, knowing none would understand because he did not understand himself. But in his heart of hearts, nothing—not sex, not love, not wealth or drink or victory, had ever come remotely close to this, for which there was no word but magic.
His soul filled with the bright darkness of it, and he put forth his shadow strength to turn the storm aside. Its power pressed on him, like a wild horse on a breaking line or a sail held in a squall, twisting him, dragging him after it. His magic was insufficient yet, untrained, without technique; he drew against the wind, collecting his strength, trying to remember everything Yirth had taught him . . .
Then he became aware of something in the wind and darkness besides himself.
Blue like clouds, black like the cold of the air, he seemed to see it through curtain after curtain of illusions. It, too, moved beyond and through the Invisible Circle. It, too, gathered the reins of the wind. The shape of it came and went, edges vanishing, melting, yet always there—in his mind, in the clouds, in the winds, he couldn’t tell. But it seemed that a dark hand stretched out toward him in a universe of shadow, darkness streaming from its bony fingers.
And in his mind he heard the whisper, A little wizardling, is it? A fledgling mage to be my slave.
Frightened, Sun Wolf tried to draw away, but realized he was too deep within the trance he’d entered in working the weather to escape. The shadow hand moved, sketching signs woven of the storms’ lightning, runes weaving a shivering net of ice. Fight!
the Wolf thought, but he had no idea how to do so—it was his soul that was being trapped, through the trance, through his own magic, not his body. The runes merged, blended with one another as on a curtain of silk billowing in the dark air all around him, a shining web drawing closer, while his mind screamed No! No!
and a thunderclap of voiceless, ecstatic laughter rocked the darkness with triumphant delight.
And as if remembering a dream, it came to him that he’d seen that dark hand before, a dream—just before the fire at the inn?—of the hand reaching toward him . . .
Wake up!
he screamed at himself. Break the trance, damn you! But he had no idea how to do that, either. Trailing the silvery darkness like sticky grave-bands, the hand seemed to grow enormously, the long fingers extending to close him in. Without a body he could not fight. He screamed, I will not serve you . . . and laughter again whispered like a chuckle of thunder.
Wizardling, you will have no choice.
In the deeps of his trance he could not reach the refuge of his own body, but, like a fragment of a forgotten dream, he conjured a vision to himself, a vision he’d had first as a child, and later in the hallucinatory agonies of the Great Trial: the vision of his own right hand with the