OF MAGIC AND DELUSION

A Tale Whispered to the Author by the One True God

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CHAPTER ONE: The Appearance of Conflict

"Surrender!" bellowed the mammoth warrior, looming like an unclean gorilla beside his dwarfed, grizzled, idiotically grinning companion. Bound in motley rags caked with dried blood and filth, the giant scratched and swaggered, an offense to the polished marble of the great throne room. He spat through the cloud of flies surrounding him, and the yellowish spittle caught and ran down a sculptured marble column.

The King of Nod gripped the exquisitely carved armrests of his throne with a fierce determination, his white knuckles concealed by the elegant silk vestments. His jaw was set, his muscles tense, his heart pounding, but he was unsure of what to do or say. He prayed for inspiration in dealing with this brutal messenger from the barbarian army claiming ancestral rights to his kingdom. The King was still reeling from two staggering blows fate had recently delivered. Two years ago his young queen had quietly bled to death in childbirth, and last year his father had fallen in battle, allowing the regency to devolve untimely upon his unprepared shoulders. Now Barth strutted before him like an angel of doom come to administer a third and fatal coup de grace.

"Lay down your arms and disband your army, or by the vengeance of Allah the Exactor, we'll crush your kingdom, slaughter your puny soldiers, and rape your whoring wives." In an involuntary obeisance to his deity, Barth's powerful hand grasped the hilt of his great broadsword.

Longbow men on each side of the King raised their bows, pointing twenty razor- tipped arrows at the behemoth's hairy chest.

Barth laughed at them and spat again, for he was the mightiest warrior in the vast and invincible army of the southern wilderness. Had he not been personally appointed by Jabal the Chosen, his mighty warlord, to cross the Great River into Nod and demand absolute capitulation and return of the rich lands which had been stolen from their ancestors.

The King wished his father were still alive. The Old King would no doubt have done something appropriate, something decisive and worthy of honor and respect. For an instant he felt his father's eyes on him, but when he glanced to the side, it was only Grimm, the wily Chief Advisor who had served the Old King so well, watching him, waiting. Grimm, like his father, like everyone in the throne room, expected something from him, and he feared he was about to disappoint them all.

Suddenly an infant, bare-bottomed, beaming, and sporting a blouse of gold lame with "Kingdom of Nod" embroidered across the back, emerged with surprising agility through the line of bowmen and toddled toward the huge warrior.

"And murder your children!" boomed Barth, drawing his sword and hoisting it overhead, poised to slice the child in two. The infant sat down and gazed up at the hulking monster.

"Stop!" cried the King, leaping to his feet. "That is the Crown Prince of Nod! Sheath your blade or you won't return to carry our reply!" The tips of twenty arrows trembled with the tension of taut bowstrings.

The giant slowly lowered his sword. "And what is your reply?"

A terrified wet nurse broke through the phalanx of bowmen, scooped up the bewildered infant, and scurried away to safety.

"We will need time to consider," the King replied, seating himself with a deliberate show of regal ceremony. "What are the terms of our surrender?"

In the shadows of the far corner of the throne room a cloaked figure made some final adjustments to a harness buckled about his waist, closed his robes, fiddled with a small canister in his left hand, and nodded to another figure concealed behind the columns on the opposite side of the large chamber.

Barth spat again. "We demand total surrender, and you'll learn the terms as we tell 'em to you." He roared at his own cleverness and, looking down, slapped his absently grinning companion on the back of the head. Then he turned back to the King. "You have two weeks, and not a day more. By then our boats will be finished, and our warriors ready to cross the Great River. In two weeks we'll enter your cowardly kingdom, with your permission or without it." Barth slipped the gleaming broadsword back into his scabbardless belt and turned to leave.

"Wait!" cried the King, searching for a way to stall the messenger a little longer.

Barth stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

"We will have an answer for you before that time," the King pronounced slowly. In the shadows behind Barth a movement caught his eye. He looked over at Grimm, who nodded silently. The King straightened himself on the throne and cleared his throat like a nervous schoolboy about to recite a difficult lesson. "It is my duty to warn you that you may leave us no choice--"

"No choice but what?" spat Barth, wheeling to face the throne.

"--but to destroy your army," the King continued evenly. "And that of your evil allies across the mountains to the southeast."

"Don't mock me!" snarled the monster, his huge hand again grasping the hilt of his broadsword, "or by the Dogs of the Dead you'll not live the two weeks to be dethroned!"

A flame was ignited in the dimness behind Barth. Overhead wires twanged softly.

"By what power would you resist our forces?" the giant challenged.

"By the power of the Sorcerer of Nod," replied the King.

"Who?"

Brilliant flares flashed afire behind the huge warrior, and as he spun around in confusion, out of the flames the cloaked figure arose as gracefully as a bird and flew slowly toward him. Barth fell to one knee and raised his arm to shield his eyes from the blinding light.

"By my powers," thundered the voice of the flying figure, reverberating eerily from two acoustic dishes which had snapped open above him like the shells of an agitated clam. "And by the powers of sorcery. Take back this message: send your troops home from our borders and leave us in peace, or suffer a horrible scourge before a single soldier has set foot upon the soil of Nod." The Sorcerer pointed his finger at Barth, and instantly a fireball shot forth from his hand and caromed off the giant's ragged chest. The Sorcerer banked gracefully into a cloud of smoke and was gone.

Barth staggered to his feet, bewildered and unsteady, and dragging his cringing comrade by the scruff of the neck, fled the throne room beating distractedly at his smoldering robes. The chamber doors thundered closed behind them.

The King clung to the arms of the throne, drawing measured breaths, until his trembling had subsided. When he had regained some composure, he arose and clapped his hands. "Bravo, Sorcerer, very convincing. But how did you do that?"

From behind the tall velvet drapes covering the wall to the King's left, the Sorcerer emerged. The hood of his cloak was thrown back, revealing a handsome, youthful face, incongruously framed by prematurely silvering hair and beard. He coiled a long wire as he approached the throne. "A Sorcerer never reveals his secrets," he replied, "even to kings."

"Well done, nonetheless. Well done, indeed." The King was beaming now. He turned to Grimm, who was never far from his side. "Don't you agree?"

The Chief Advisor was a stocky, bushy-eyebrowed bear of a man. The Old King had placed absolute confidence in him for more than forty years. Grimm wore his perennial scowl like an approaching thunderstorm wears dark shadows. "I think you should see that Barth and his sniveling companion are afforded safe conduct to the border and back across the Great River. He should not be detained whatever outrage he may commit on his journey back." Grimm's eyes narrowed to slits of lightning flashing beneath his cumulus eyebrows. "It is important that Barth returns with his report to Jabal the Chosen."

"Yes, of course." The King grasped the lapel of an attendant stationed beside the throne and pulled him close. "You heard the Chief Advisor?"

"Yes, your highness."

"Well, see that it's done."

The attendant bowed and rushed out through a passageway concealed by the tapestry behind the throne.

"It appeared for a moment our plans would be undone," the King remarked, "when the Prince blundered out to confront our unwelcome visitors."

"You handled it quite well, my lord," the Sorcerer responded, and all the attendants and archers murmured assent.

"Do you really think so?" The King was pleased with himself.

"It was fortunate your bowmen restrained themselves," Grimm rumbled. "I think it's time to clear the court, your highness. Ask the Sorcerer to remain."

While the attendants and soldiers were departing, the King asked his Chief Advisor in a lowered voice, "Do you really think this . . . display . . . will do any good?" His brow was deeply furrowed. "Will it forestall the attack?"

"Barth was impressed, my lord. But I would be very surprised if Jabal gives his story much credence. We can only hope that word of his obvious fright will spread through the ranks and weaken the fighting resolve of his comrades at arms."

"Yes," the King sighed. He shook his head ruefully. "But even so, our small army will be no match for countless hordes of fanatics bent on recovering what they believe we stole from them." The King looked small and frightened. "I wonder what father would have done?"

When the door had closed behind the last attendant, Grimm turned angrily to the Sorcerer. "Why in God's name did you add that business about the terrible scourge? Now they'll find out in time it was all an empty bluff."

The Sorcerer ignored the Chief Advisor and knelt before the King. The clear fire in his eyes was eclipsed for an instant by a memory of personal tragedy. He shuddered, then spoke in a frighteningly quiet voice, "My liege, my threat to Barth was not empty. The power of sorcery shall prevail. It's inexorable course has already begun." A tear rolled inexplicably down his cheek. "Your enemies will be destroyed. Your kingdom spared."

The King clutched the Sorcerer's sleeve. "If you can do this, you may choose your own reward. That is my solemn pledge."

The claim of Jabal the Chosen and his followers to all the lands of Nod was not entirely without basis. It was indeed Jabal's ancestor, and not the King's, who had first wandered into the great valley and claimed it for his descendants, founding the ancient city of Enoch, which he named after his firstborn. But Jabal's ancestors were nomads and wanderers, living in tents, following their herds wherever the untilled land would sustain them, and Nod had yielded its fruits to them only grudgingly. Like vagabonds they drifted from place to place, across the Great River and beyond, forever homeless.

It was ancestors of the King who had later migrated into the territory, settling it, civilizing it, digging irrigation channels and dams, building villages and towns and cities, constructing roads, reclaiming fertile cropland from the parched desert and impenetrable chaparral of the rolling foothills. Farm by farm, field by field, fence by fence, the King's ancestors had slowly tamed the land, assimilating a few of Jabal's people, and displacing the rest.

As the population multiplied with the passing years, the inhabitants of Nod managed to eke out a modest existence for themselves by careful planning, husbandry, and small but reliable harvests from their farms and ranches. The natural grazing lands upon which the nomads depended, however, could not keep pace with expanded use, and in lean years, Jabal's forbearers fought with one another for what little there was. The cost of defeat was often starvation. Conflict spawned a class of nomad warriors, marauding bands of soldiers under the command of a petty warlord, stealing what they needed, preying upon the weak, and skilled swordsmen and archers retained by the powerful tribal chiefs to increase their wealth and defend what they had taken from others.

To protect its subjects, the Kingdom of Nod established a small but efficient militia. It was all that was needed. The Great River to the south and the ragged Eastern Range of mountains, whose summits and ridges defined the boundary to the east, provided natural barriers to the ravaging barbarians. Only an occasional party of adventuresome marauders ever managed to cross into Nod to steal the fruits of the more gentle society, and such incursions were easily controlled by the well-trained army of Nod.

Or so things had stood before the vision of Jabal the Chosen. Jabal was a fierce young warrior of great skill and cunning who professed one day that an angel of Allah had appeared to him in a dream and appointed him to unite all the warring tribes under his exclusive command for the holy purpose of retaking the lands of Nod, which rightfully belonged to his people. He had been chosen by God as their savior and deliverer. Through a series of treaties, intrigues, betrayals, deceptions, and bloody battles, Jabal the Chosen won over or overpowered nearly all the tribal chieftains and warlords. He mercilessly slaughtered the remaining opposition and consolidated his command over all the nomad troops south of the Great River. Terror and promise of reward sustained his tenuous alliance, while he pandered his divine mission to the superstitious and gullible, who turned out to include most of his troops. His warriors numbered in the tens of thousands, and though undisciplined, they made up in religious zeal for what they lacked in military finesse. They outnumbered the defenders of Nod by a hundred to one.

The Old King had sent a select group of special envoys to Jabal in the hope of negotiating a peaceful settlement of their territorial dispute and averting war. These were fine counselors, reasonable men learned in property rights, surveying, land titles, adverse possession, and eminent domain. Jabal the Chosen laughed and lopped off their heads. His command found its legitimacy in his divinely inspired mission of overthrowing the Kingdom of Nod by force of arms, and any deviation from that course might undermine the alliance itself. Compromise was out of the question.

Six weeks later the Old King fell in glorious hand-to-hand battle with Jabal himself. Or so the story was told. Actually he cut his heel on the rusty sword of a fallen comrade and contracted lockjaw. As his father before him, the Old King jealously preserved his direct command over the troops, and while personally leading a force of crack horsemen against a bandit gang which had been terrorizing the villages along the southern border, he had fallen into a trap set by Jabal the Chosen. Beneath the blackness of a new moon, the Old King had led a bold escape, but he had sustained the seemingly minor injury in the process. He was dead before the moon was again full.

Grimm had borne the tragic news to his new lord and master. Just after breakfast the King was on his way out to the fields for a rousing croquet match with his cronies who had all grown middle-aged waiting for that day.

"Your father has fallen in battle," Grimm had told him. "You are now the King and must take charge. It is up to you to settle matters with Jabal the Chosen."

The Old King had always appeared larger than life to his son. Each footstep he was to follow in seemed so big it would swallow him completely and leave no trace. The forty-year-old regent listened speechlessly to his Chief Advisor. Then he fainted.

The subjects of Nod were not warlike by nature. As news of the impending invasion spread, panic increased and threatened to overthrow the new King's tenuous reign even before he could be deposed by the invading hordes. Wealthy landowners hastily gathered together whatever valuables they could and scurried frantically around in circles. The kingdom was an island of culture within a sea of mindless barbarism. There was no place to go. Peasants abandoned their ripening fields, preferring to spend their last few days at home with family. Everywhere merchants, shopkeepers, and tradesmen stopped work and, gazing toward the southern horizon, sniffed the breeze and wondered what the hell the King planned to do about it.

The day after Barth left the castle and the Sorcerer had returned in haste to his home atop one of the tall peaks in the Eastern Range, Grimm sat the King down and tried to discuss military strategy with him. Jabal had managed to enlist the savage mountain tribes of the east into his alliance and was planning a pincer attack on the kingdom from the south and east. Troops stood poised at the borders of Nod to begin his self-proclaimed holy vendetta. A line of defense had to be established.

But the King wanted nothing to do with it. He shuddered to choose between loosing a savage war and the doom of unconditional surrender. In terror and confusion he proclaimed Grimm to be Commander-in-Chief of all the armed forces of Nod and fled to his private chamber to await the outcome. He had been curiously heartened by the wizard's terse assurances, though he carefully avoided inquiry into the man's methods and means. Silently he cheered him on.