The Golden Shield of IBF Read online

  THE GOLDEN SHIELD OF IBF

  Jerry & Sharon Ahern

  The Golden Shield of IBF

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1999 by Jerry & Sharon Ahern

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471

  ISBN: 0-671-57825-1

  978-1-61824-007-1

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First printing, August 1999

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Ahern family stalwarts Ed Kramer

  and the Jerry Buergel Family,

  friends of value beyond measure

  in this or any other world or time;

  and, for Betsy, who suggested a home for the Virgin Enchantress.

  Chapter One

  Swan was naked except for white silken ribbons binding back her hair at the nape of her neck. She swirled the blue-gray surface of the Memory Pool with the tips of her toes and her skin goosefleshed and her nipples involuntarily hardened with the water’s chill.

  Swan glanced over her shoulder, along the high meadows expanse. Her horse was hobbled beneath the drooping boughs of a Ka’B’Oo, its main trunk thrusting nearly a hundred spans toward the snow-threatening clouds. The powerfully built white mare grazed peacefully, showing no sign of alarm.

  Swan would be dangerously vulnerable to attack: alone, all of her clothes, her charm bag, her sword and dagger set aside. There was, however, no choice if she was to know what she should do. Her skills as an Enchantress notwithstanding, she had never divined the future: the very thought of such ability was terrifying. Rather, to plan for tomorrow, it was necessary to interpret the yesterdays which had gone before. That was why she came to the Memory Pool.

  Swan stepped forward, one foot instantly immersed to the ankle, reliving a fleeting recollection of someone whom she had never been able to call “father.” He had vanished from her life when she had not yet lived long enough to possess the power of speech. But the enigmatic words that he would whisper to her as he rocked her in his arms echoed now from the roots of her soul.

  “L’Ull B’Yan G’Ite!” Swan cried.

  As if she were an infant again, Swan felt the warmth of her father’s breath against her cheek, the roughness of his face as he touched his lips against that cheek. But that was all the recollection that she had of him, and the waters of a Memory Pool promised nothing more, could not create memories where none existed.

  Swan took another step. The pool began to engulf her, its waters reaching toward her in great towers of cold froth, wildly crashing over her shoulders, her breasts, a fierce tempest assaulting her body, as waves would surge over rocky crags along some lonely shore. And the full power of the Memory Pool began flowing through her, mingling with her body’s life force energy. With each step that she took deeper and deeper into the Memory Pool’s churning waters the past gripped her more tightly, consumed her in long ago realities...

  Eran, Sorceress Queen of Creath, Mistress General of the Horde of Koth, galloped hard across the plain, wind riding hair black and flowing, arrow straight. Eran’s eyes, gemstone green, deep beyond deep, glistened like dragon’s blood, were brighter than the sun gleaming snow over which she rode.

  “Mother,” Swan whispered, alone on the wind-lashed parapet overlooking the plain. It was her second-sight which allowed her to see in such detail at such a distance.

  A quirt was looped to her mother’s wrist, but Eran’s black gauntleted hands alone, knotted in black leather reins, subjugated the dapple grey stallion. The grey would know the whips sting and not wish to taste it again after learning it so well when first broken to the saddle.

  The stallion was named Mul’Din. Eran, the Queen Enchantress, never rode mares, always stallions, never gelded until she was through with them. Each one of them was once a man. Mul’Din was a young lieutenant of the Horde, a lover who refused to submit to Eran’s erotic demands, who wished to dominate rather than be dominated. Eran spell-changed him, as she had with all the others, dominated him with the lesson of the whip, rode him wherever she went. Inside him beat a man’s heart, functioned a man’s brain; and, although Eran had taken from him the power of speech, he could still understand as a man.

  Swan cocooned herself more deeply within her fur-ruffed greatcape, raised her skirts and started down the narrow steps. Flakes of snow blew in clouds like smoke. By the time Swan reached the base of the stone steps, the gap between horsewoman and castle wall had noticeably diminished, less than a hundred warblades.

  Swan no longer needed second-sight, merely watched as any ordinary mortal might. Eran wore a bodice, tightly cinched, greener almost than her eyes. A tooled black baldric was suspended from her right shoulder, buckled between her breasts over the knot of her crocheted shawl.

  The deeply engraved hilt and pommel of her sword swashed against her left hip. The blade’s scabbard vanished beneath, then reappeared from within the crimson folds of heavy winter skirts hitched high above black boots, skirts and linen petticoats raised so that Eran could ride astride like a man as she always did.

  The great horse Mul’Din skidded on its haunches in the snow, reined back. Righting itself, it reared, shook its head. Lips drawn back, a ray of sunlight striking the steel bit in its mouth, the stallion’s teeth gleamed white beneath blood red lips. Mul’Din flicked its tail and hurtled itself into the final charge, billows of steam issuing from wide flared nostrils.

  With an all but imperceptible shrug of her left shoulder, a tug of her left hand, Eran urged Mul’Din across the lowered drawbridge and up the flagstones along the castle’s ramped outer defense rampart.

  Swan left the landing and walked onto the ramp, waiting. The thrumming of the stallion Mul’Din’s hooves had slowed. Eran was cooling the animal as she closed the distance.

  Strapped to Eran’s boots were glinting silver spurs, their tips blunted so that they would neither snag the hem of her gown nor rip the hand-sewn lace beneath it. Her cheeks looked cold flushed, flawless. She sprang from the saddle, skirts falling into place, swaying round her ankles.

  “You are exquisite as always, mother.”

  Her mother’s eyes swept over her. “A woman your age should wear brighter colors, Swan. Your cloak, for example. Such a dark green! Now, if only the fur trimming the hood weren’t black—”

  Swan smiled, touched a fingertip to her lips—they were shaded a deep red—and then whisked the finger through the fur-ruff framing her face.

  “That color is much better for the fur, Swan. That was a very nice bit of magic.”

  “I’ve always trusted your eye for clothes, mother.”

  “And I’ve always trusted your good taste, in everything but companions. My spies have made it perfectly clear to me, Swan, that you totally ignore my warnings against consorting with the Company of Mir. You conspire against me with my enemies, themselves madmen who follow the teachings of the maddest madman! You have great abilities, my young Enchantress, but they are conjurer’s tricks compared to the powers which I command. You well know this, Swan, yet you persist in goading me, giving me no choice but to kill you.” Eran’s voice, in the mid-range as women’s voices went, rose and fell, musically, hypnotically. Swan had witnessed her mother kill by voice.

&nbs
p; “And, mother, did you ride here for that? To kill me?”

  “I rode fifty lancethrows here to warn you one last time. Killing you would have been vastly quicker and ridiculously easier.”

  Mul’Din whinnied.

  “Silence, Mul’Din!” The whip swung up from the loop on Eran’s wrist, settled into her hand and lashed across her one-time lover’s muzzle. She returned her gaze, her attention to Swan, the horse silent, great head bowed. “I am your mother, Swan, and for that reason only you still live. I am first the Sorceress Queen of Creath, Mistress General of the Horde of Koth. Heed well where my priorities lie, child! Continue in your foolish ways and perish in agony beyond any that you can now comprehend, daughter or no.”

  Swan steadied her breathing before she spoke. “If my magic will not grow stronger as did yours—Your powers were once no greater than mine. You yourself told me that once. But if my magic will not grow stronger, how am I a threat to you?”

  “Threat!?”

  “Mother, what possible mischief might I or even all the Company of Mir cause which your powers could not overwhelm in the blink of an eye? And you command the Horde of Koth, the creatures in your armies outnumbering the Company of Mir better than a hundred to one! How am I or are they a threat?”

  “You are an annoyance, girl! They are a blasphemy with their talk of freedom. Soon, they will all be dead. It is your magic alone which hides them from the Horde, shields the Company of Mir’s stronghold. I have come to order you to break your spell.”

  Swan laughed. “You can’t break my spell because you don’t know how I wove it. You might spend years and never find the right combination, or never know if you had. The only way for sure would be—”

  There was the ringing of steel whisked from leather. The blade of Eran’s sword arced across the grey winter sky, sliced a ray of sunlight escaping through an instant’s rip in the scudding clouds of the snow shower. Razor sharp steel rested against Swan’s neck, sliced through the fabric of her greatcape’s hood, but drew no blood from Swan’s flesh. “Kill you? Break the spell in a day and live. This blade would have continued on its path and your path would have ended here and now forever if I had not wished to give you this one last chance.” As quickly as it had appeared, the sword returned to its sheath. Swan shrugged off the damaged greatcape, her shoulders bare beneath it, the flakes of snow which touched her skin no longer cold seeming, but life affirming.

  Eran settled her left foot into the stirrup of her black tooled saddle and swung astride Mul’Din. “Send word to me that the spell is broken or I will send the Horde to take your life. Good-bye, my daughter.”

  Eran’s spurs jabbed against her hapless former lover’s flanks and she jerked Mul’Din’s reins, wheeling the animal around. “Ride, beast!” Mul’Din leapt into a full gallop, a spray of snow in the wake of its steel-shod hooves.

  Swan gathered her skirts and stooped to pick up her greatcape. With a touch of her finger, the rent in the fabric rewove itself as it was before her mother’s sword had sliced it. Again, Swan touched a finger to her lips, then whisked it over the fur which trimmed the hood, the fur once again black. Swan stood up, stared after her mother.

  The snow was growing more intense, the flakes larger, heavier. Swan returned the greatcape to her shoulders, nestled the hood about her head. She had survived, both her mother and the Memory Pool. Only a K’Ur Mir could dare fully to immerse herself in a Memory Pool—seven such pools were known to exist in Creath—and ever hope to retain sufficient willpower to emerge again. Her mother had done it when she began womanhood, as was always the custom for the daughter of the ruling Queen Enchantress ever since the dawn of Creath. Her mother had broken the custom, telling Swan, “Your father was not of proper birth, was not K’Ur Mir. You are not fully of the Enchantress blood. You would die.”

  Children would dip their hands into a Memory Pool, and a careless mother would lose her child forever if she let the child reach deeper. Some persons, whom age or sadness had weakened in spirit beyond life’s redemption, willingly surrendered their lives, hoping for a last glimpse of long ago happiness. The wretches would relive life’s agonies equally among life’s joys. Some very few philosophers still existed in Creath, not yet hunted down, eradicated by her mother’s evil. And they argued (when idle hours in some safe haven allowed) that death in the waters of a Memory Pool was not death at all, that time and the “reality” of memory became ever more compacted, hence the willing suicide or hapless accident victim was dead by objective standards in mere minutes, but those minutes were an infinity to the dying.

  Swan had stood to her shoulders in the Memory Pool and let the waters do their magic, her memories swirling within her and the full knowledge of her memories filling her. She was K’Ur Mir or she would not have lived. Her mother lied. But if her father were of the blood, where had he gone? Drawing her greatcape about her, Swan ran along the ramp to find her own horse. Her mother refused to allow her any attendants at the castle which was the official residence of the Virgin Enchantress, Daughter Royal, Princess of Creath. So Swan used magic to make the castle clean, to bring food and wine, to create her clothes, to tend the watch on the parapets, to raise and lower the drawbridge, to keep her horse. Her magic already at work, the white mare—the only other living thing in the castle—would be saddled and waiting.

  Swan reached the otherwise empty stables, nuzzled her horse’s head for a moment, then mounted. She could ride astride as well as her mother or as well as any man. Today would not be a day to ride any other way but astride. Swan tucked up her skirts in her left hand as she clasped the pommel of the saddle with her right, then slipped into the saddle. “Ride!”

  The white mare cantered from the stables, Swan ordering the doors closed behind them. The pace quickened as they crossed the drawbridge, Swan ordering it raised after them.

  Erg’Ran, chief scribe within the Company of Mir, had sent a message to her to meet with him, the arrow to which it was attached shot and re-shot twenty lancethrows distance or more before impaling itself in the door of the main hall. He had information for her which would change everything, the message had said. Swan had long contemplated risking the Memory Pool, and dismissed the idea as dangerous, foolhardy. Although she had no idea what information Erg’Ran now possessed, the tone of his written words was what forced her to make the decision. And she was glad for it.

  The miller’s cottage that was the meeting place was half-burned, more than half-roofless, and remote in the extreme, accessible only by means of an eroded forest path well-overgrown. It was once a road, clear from being well-traveled when people still lived in this portion of the Land. But those who were not killed had fled, when the Horde of Koth swept through. Those who had neither died nor fled were impressed to slavery and taken off. Only the dark, evil, nameless things which had once hidden deep in the forests now dwelt here, free to roam about as they wished.

  They would not usually see her or the horse that she rode. Swan’s magic could cloud their senses. But she dared not use it this day. Magic was additive, she had learned long ago. One could always close a door, light a fire, make a broomstick or lance shaft dance. But serious magic drained away and had to be replenished. And Swan had no idea how much of her magic she had used today to survive the Memory Pool. Rather than cloaking her animal and herself in invisibility, she held tightly to the mare’s reins with one hand and to the hilt of her saddle-mounted sword with the other. Despite her caution, she was still maintaining two very difficult spells. One brought confusion upon the Horde of Koth when they neared the hiding place behind the Falls of Mir where the Company of Mir took refuge. The other spell, admittedly less taxing, obscured both her and her horse from view by birds. Her mother was known to use the simple creatures as an extension of her second-sight.

  The ride took longer than usual, because she rode more slowly, with greater caution than ever before. But at last she dismounted before the cottage.

  Erg’Ran limped out to meet her, holding the re
ins of the white mare while Swan dismounted, as if she were somehow less than physically capable of handling her own horse. She did not resent the gesture, however. Erg’Ran was merely an old man with a wooden peg in place of a chopped off foot, robbed of everything except his dignity, subconsciously recalling that he had been raised well in better times, doing a gentlemanly service to a lady. It was something that came naturally to him despite the life he was forced to live.

  As Swan’s feet touched the ground, Erg’Ran stepped back and bowed stiffly. Swan touched a gloved hand to his shoulder. Unbidden, she entered the cottage, leaned against the small table at its center and breathed. “I had to conserve my magic. Riding openly through the forest is a very scary thing. And you do it all the time!”

  “Most of us have no significant magic, are merely mortal, Enchantress.”

  “I wonder if I could ever get used to that.”

  Erg’Ran laughed softly. “That’s the least of our problems, Enchantress.”

  “My mother has given me a single day to break the spell which protects the Company of Mir or she’ll send the Horde of Koth to kill me.”

  “Your father lives, Enchantress,” Erg’Ran told her, then lowered his still clear brown eyes to light his pipe.

  Swan was content with her womanhood, except for one thing. Men’s clothes—she had worn them a few times out of necessity—had pockets. Anyone could wear a pouch or haversack, but pockets patched to the outside of a jerkin or slit within the side seam of a robe were wondrous. Only men had these. And Swan wanted desperately to do something with her hands, to hide them away. But she could not. She could clasp them demurely together at her abdomen, one cupped in the other as though she were a supplicant (but they would still shake), or let her hands lie limp at her sides, supported by skirt and petticoats, the trembling still obvious. Rather than either of these, and failing having pockets, she hugged her arms close to her body, hands hidden by her elbows.