Oath of Swords

Bahzell stared at them, shaken and half-mesmerized. An alarm bell seemed to toll deep inside him, battering at the fascination which held him motionless, and he heard Brandark hiss behind him.

“I think Brandark recognizes me, Bahzell,” the stranger said in that same, dryly amused tone.

“That’s as may be, but I don’t,” Bahzell shot back, shaking off the impact of those fiery eyes with an effort, “and I’ve had a hard enough day without riddle games in the snow.”

He took a half-step forward, sword ready. The horseman only smiled, as if at a child in a tantrum, and Bahzell felt the Rage flare at his core once more at the other’s amusement, but Brandark spoke suddenly from behind him.

“I wouldn’t do anything hasty, Bahzell,” the Bloody Sword said in a very careful tone. “Not unless you really want to spend a few years as a toad.”

“What?” Bahzell’s ears twitched, but his attention was so focused on the stranger that his friend’s words hardly registered.

“That sort of thing happens to people who attack wizards,” Brandark said, and a bolt of sheer fury lashed through the Horse Stealer at the word “wizards.” The Rage slipped the frayed leash of his will, and he lunged forward with a murderous snarl. The tip of his sword thrust straight for the stranger’s chest, but the horseman didn’t even move. He only gazed at the hradani, and his eldritch eyes flashed like twin suns.

Something Bahzell had no words to describe slammed into him. It struck like a hammer fit to shatter a world, yet there was a delicacy to it, as well-almost a gentleness, like a man snatching a hummingbird from midair without so much as ruffling its feathers-and unaccustomed panic sparkled at his heart as it did the impossible and froze a hradani in the grip of the Rage. He found himself utterly unable to move, his murderous lunge arrested a foot from its target, and the stranger shook his head apologetically.

“Excuse me. I know you’ve had a difficult time of late, and I really shouldn’t let my questionable sense of humor get the better of me. But I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a very long time, Bahzell, and I just couldn’t resist.”

Bahzell stood motionless, and fresh shock rippled through him as he realized the Rage had vanished. Somehow the stranger had banished it as if it had never come, and that was the strangest thing of all.

The horseman moved his mount aside, out of the line of Bahzell’s lunge but still where the hradani could see him, and he bowed from the saddle.

“Again, I ask your pardon for my behavior,” he said gravely. “And in answer to your question, Bahzell, my name is Wencit. Wencit of Rūm.” This time he made a tiny gesture with one hand, and whatever had held Bahzell fled. He staggered forward with the force of his interrupted attack, but a fresh paralysis-this one of sheer disbelief-held him as tightly as the vanished spell. He gawked at the man on the horse, jaw dropping, stu

Wencit of Rūm. It couldn’t be. Yet, at the same time, it had to be. Only one man had eyes like that, and he’d been a fool not to realize it, but even as he thought that, he knew why he hadn’t. A man didn’t expect to meet a figure out of legend in a snowstorm a hundred leagues from anywhere.

“Wencit of Rūm?” he repeated in a dazed tone, and the horseman nodded. “The Wencit of Rūm?” Bahzell persisted with the numbness of his shock.

“So far as I know, there’s only one of me,” Wencit said gravely. Bahzell darted a look at Brandark, and the astonishment on the Bloody Sword’s face was almost deeper than his own. Of course. Brandark was a scholar who’d always wanted to be a bard. No doubt he knew all the tales of the Fall and the part Wencit of Rūm, lord of the last White Council of Wizards, had played in saving what he could from the wreck of Kontovar. But that had been twelve centuries ago-surely the man couldn’t still be alive!

But he was a wizard, Bahzell reminded himself. A wild wizard. Possibly the most powerful single wizard who’d ever lived. Who knew what he could or couldn’t be?

“Well,” the Horse Stealer said finally, sheathing his sword with mechanical precision. “Wencit of Rūm.” He shook himself like a dog shaking water from its coat. “It’s not so very fond of wizards my folk are, but then, most of them aren’t so very fond of us , either.” He smiled crookedly and folded his arms across his chest. “And what, if I might be asking, brings Wencit of Rūm out in all this?” He flicked his ears at the thickening snow, and there was an edge of darkness in Wencit’s answering smile.

“Very much what brings you.” The wizard dismounted and stroked his mount’s neck while the horse lipped his white hair affectionately.

“Ah?”

“Ah, indeed. There’s no White Council now, Bahzell, but I do what I can to stop the abuse of the art. I’ve come to rely heavily on the magi’s aid for that, and the Axe Hallow mage academy got word to me when Zarantha didn’t reach home on schedule.”

He shrugged, and Bahzell nodded.

“Aye, she’d be important to you, and the magi, wouldn’t she now?”

“If you’re referring to her plans to found a Spearman mage academy, the answer is yes. But if you’re suggesting her mage talent is all that makes her important to us, you’re wrong.” Wencit spoke almost mildly, but there was a hint of steel in his voice, and Bahzell nodded again, accepting the rebuke, if that was what it had been.

“Fair enough,” he said slowly, “but I’m just the tiniest bit confused. You’ve been glued to their trail like a lodestone for days now, and I’m thinking the likes of you could deal with the wizards who have her.”

“And you want to know why I haven’t.” Wencit made the question a statement, and Bahzell nodded yet again. “It’s not quite as simple as you may think, Bahzell. Oh, you’re right, I could deal with either of them-or both together-easily enough, but not with the men they have with them. Not without violating the Strictures, at any rate.”

“The Strictures?” Bahzell’s arched eyebrow invited further explanation, but it was Brandark who answered him.

“The Strictures of Ottovar, Bahzell,” the Bloody Sword said, dismounting from his own horse to stand beside his friend. “They were the laws of wizardry in Kontovar, the rules the White Council was formed to enforce.”

“Among other things,” Wencit amended with a nod.

“And what might the Strictures be?” Bahzell asked.

“Exactly what Brandark said: the laws of wizardry. Or of white wizardry, at any rate. They were written by Ottovar the Great and Gwynytha the Wise when they ended the wizard wars of their own time and founded Ottovar’s empire. In simple terms, they were designed to protect those who don’t have power from casual abuse by those who do.”

“And you’re still after following them all these years later?”

“If I don’t, who will?” That steely edge was back in Wencit’s voice, and his wildfire gaze bored into Bahzell’s eyes. “Does time alone define right or wrong? And even if it did, by what right could I demand other wizards obey them-or hold them accountable when they don’t-if I violated them myself?”

“Aye, there’s that,” Bahzell agreed slowly, rubbing his chin with one hand, then gave the wizard a sharp look. “Still and all, I can’t but think you’ve hunted us out to do more than tell us what it is you can’t be doing.”

“True.” Wencit smiled almost impishly and gave his horse’s neck another pat, then leaned back against his saddle and surveyed the two hradani. “Under the Strictures, I may use sorcery against nonwizards only in direct self-defense, and even then I can’t kill them if anything short of killing will keep me alive. Wizards-especially dark wizards-are another matter. Them I can challenge to arcane combat, but somehow I doubt their henchmen could refrain from sticking a knife in my back while I do it.”