The Drawing of the Dark

'Oh, no, no. I do have one option, but it's a thing,' and suddenly he looked old and frightened, 'it's a thing I'd.. .almost.. .rather die than do.'>'Oh! Sorry to hear it.' Duffy didn't know what more to say about a woman who, whatever else might be said of her, had still been dead longer than his great-great-grandfather.

Aurelianus nodded. 'Sorry, you say? So was I, so was I. When I heard of it, a week or two later, I... visited that village.' He sipped his brandy thoughtfully. 'You can still see a chimney or two of the place these days, sticking up from the grassed-over mounds.'

Getting up abruptly, the old man lurched over to a chest in the corner. 'Somewhere in here,' he said, lifting back the heavy lid and flinging small objects carelessly to the side, 'is a book of her country-spells she gave me. Ah? Aha!' He straightened up, holding a battered leather-bound little book. He flipped open the front cover and read something on the flyleaf, then slammed it shut and stared at the ceiling, blinking rapidly.

Duffy found himself regretting his momentary flash of sympathy. For God's sake, man, he thought, show a little restraint, a little control. To steer the sorcerer onto less maudlin ground, he asked, 'And how does the siege look to you lately? Any sorcerous hints or glimpses of the outcome?'

Aurelianus put the book down on a cluttered table and resumed his seat, a little self-consciously. 'No, nothing. Sorcerously I'm blind and deaf, as I'm sure I explained to you. When I want to know how Vienna stands I ask someone like yourself, who has been out there and seen it happening.' He put the snake in his mouth at last, and stared hard, cross-eyed, at the thing's head. After perhaps

a minute a red glow showed on the end, and then with a brief gout of flame the thing was lit, and he was cheerfully puffing smoke.

Duffy cocked an eyebrow. 'How much of that sort of thing can you still do?'

'Oh, I can do small things only, tricks, like making beetles stand up and jig or making girls' skirts blow up over their heads. You know the sort of thing? But I can do nothing that is directly aggressive to the Turks, not even send them scalp-itch or foot-stink. Of course we're protected to the same degree from Ibrahim... it's simply a deadlock of all the powerful areas of magic, which I think I predicted to you five months ago.'

Duffy was refilling his glass again. 'Yes. You wanted to get rain-magic done while you still had no restrictions on your power - and it may well have worked.'

The old wizard was mildly annoyed. 'May have worked? It did work, you clod. Have you seen any big cannons among the Turk formations, like the ones they overthrew Rhodes with? No, you haven't. My heavy rains forced Suleiman to leave them behind.'

'The rain was damned fortunate, certainly,' Duffy agreed. 'But can you be sure it was summoned rain, and not a natural phenomenon that was going to happen anyway?'

'You were there. You know. You just want to argue with me.'

'Very well, I admit it worked that time in May. But what's the use of having a wizard on our side if he can't do any wizardry?'

Aurelianus let a long stream of smoke out in a sigh. 'Picture yourself in a corps-a-corps with a swordsman who is your equal in skill; your dagger is blocking his dagger, and your sword his sword. Now your dagger isn't free to stab with - but would you say it's useless?'

'No.. .but I wouldn't just stand there straining. I'd knee the bastard and spit in his eyes. Listen, when you were describing this deadlock in advance, you said it would be virtually unbreakable.'

Aurelianus frowned. 'Yes. It is.'

'Virtually doesn't mean the same thing as absolutely.'

'Hell, man, the sun is virtually certain to rise tomorrow morning, the sea is -'It could be broken, though? It'd be tremendously difficult or unlikely, but it could?'

'Could a man amputate, butcher and cook his own legs to avoid starvation? Yes.'

'How? Not this starving man, I mean -'I know. Very well, there are two courses I could take

that would free all the potency of military magic. One is horribly uncertain, and the other is horribly certain. Which one would you like to hear about?'

'Both. What's the uncertain one?'

'Well, the present balance is between Ibrahim and me; it would tilt in our favor if 'the Fisher King himself were actually to ride out and join his will with mine in a battle. Do you understand? He'd have to be there physically and take part in it. That's unthinkably dangerous, like recklessly advancing your king out from behind the pawn wall in a chess game when your life and the lives of everyone you know are somehow at stake.' He spread his hands. 'After all, Vienna isn't the absolutely final place in which to make a last stand against the East. There are other strength-spots where we could regroup and not be too much worse off than we are now.

'But there is no other Fisher King to be had. If he were to be struck by a stray harquebus ball, or cut down by a particularly energetic Janissary, or simply suffer heart failure from exertion or tension.. .well, that would be the end of the story. If the West seems chaotic and disorganized now, when he's only injured, try to imagine how it will be if he dies.'

'Pretty bad, no doubt. Uh. . .there'd be no way for the Turks to counter this escalation?'

'Not as things stand, no. The only way would be for the Eastern King to join in the conflict too, which would simply maintain the deadlock; it would just be tenser, with more force being exerted on both sides. But of course their King is safely hidden in Turkey or somewhere.'

Duffy scratched his chin. 'Would it really be so mad to bring the Fisher King into a battle? It seems to me -'You have no conception of the stakes,' Aurelianus snapped. 'If anything went wrong we'd lose everything There would be no kingdoms of the West, just a wasteland of hastily organized tribes, living in the burned-out ruins of cities, waiting, probably eagerly, for Suleiman to ride through and take formal possession.

'Oh, come on,' Duffy protested, 'let's be realistic. I'll take your word that it would be bad, but it couldn't be that bad.'

'Said the expert on metaphysical history! Brian, you've never seen a culture that has lost its center, its soul. I was not exaggerating.'

The Irishman took a deep sip of the brandy. 'Very well. Tell me about the other way, the.. ."horribly certain" way.