The Seventh Book of Lost Swords : Wayfinder's Story by Fred Saberhagen (best books for 7th graders TXT) 📗

the two human visitors. The trial was brief but quite conclusive: the defenders of the Temple retreated, cowed.

      Moments later came sounds of hurried human movement in an adjoining room. A door, not the one through which the callers had come in, opened quietly, and another bald man, this one obviously elderly, looked in with a wary expression.

      “I assume,” Tigris said to him, smiling brightly, “that you must be the Director of Security?” She almost curtsied.

      The newcomer glanced at her, frowned, and kept silent, looking to his chief for orders.

      “I would like to know,” Hyrcanus grated at him, “how these two got in here.”

      The man in the doorway cleared his throat. “Sir, I recognize this man as the well- known wizard, Wood. The woman with him—”

      “He has already told me his name,” Hyrcanus interrupted. “What I want to know is how —”

      “And someday perhaps I will tell you how we got in,” said Wood, interrupting the interrupter. “But there are other matters I wish to discuss first.”

      The Director of Security, seemingly unimpressed, stared at his fellow magician. “I know your name, and I warn you that you had better leave. At once.”

      “You? Warn me?”

      The elder nodded impressively. His face had become lugubrious. “I am indeed the Director of Security here. We here do not fear your powers.”

      Wood’s eyes were twinkling dangerously. “Only because you do not comprehend them.”

      “I believe,” the Director remarked drily, “that you are the same Wood who about two years ago visited Sha’s Casino, a Red Temple establishment in the city of Bihari.”       “And so?”

      “On that occasion—correct me, sir, if I am wrong—you encountered certain enemies and were forced to make a swift retreat. It has further come to my attention that you entered Sha’s Casino armed with the Sword Shieldbreaker, and that you left without that weapon—and lacking any compensation for it.” The elderly man in the doorway smirked faintly.

      Tigris, looking at her master, paled a trifle.

      Wood put his fists on his hips. His voice was ice. “On that occasion, my man, I was opposed by forces well beyond your ability—let alone that of your money-grubbing masters here—to understand, much less to deal with.”

      A moment of silence followed. It was plain from their expressions that Wood’s current hearers—except for Tigris, of course—remained unconvinced.

      The wizard nodded briskly. “Very well, then. I see that a demonstration will be necessary.”

      The Director’s expression became uncertain. Hyrcanus behind his desk started to say something, then remained quiet.

      Silence held for a long moment.

      Wood’s eyes closed. His left hand extended slightly in front of him, palm upward. The long fingers quivered. Then the hand moved, and the forearm, slowly, made a gentle lifting gesture. Near the high ceiling an almost imperceptible turmoil in the air grew briefly, lightly sharper.

      In moments this gentle disturbance was answered by a much heavier vibration. An inhuman groaning and thudding seemed to start in the roots of the huge building and progress slowly upward. Soon distant frightened yells could be heard, rising from somewhere below the thickly carpeted office floor.

      Tigris was smiling faintly now, watching the Blue Temple men for their reaction. Neither of them had moved, though the eyes of the Chairman seemed about to pop.

      Wood’s face, his eyes still closed, had hardened into an implacable mask.

      The door to the secretary’s anteroom burst open, to frame the large form of an armed guard officer. “Sir! The gold—” The man had trouble finishing his sentence.

      Hyrcanus snapped: “What of the gold?”

      The guard turned halfway round, gesturing over one beefy shoulder. “It’s—coming—up the stairs—”

      The Chairman leapt up from his chair, trying to see out past him.

      The deepest rumbling, which had begun down around the massive, vaulted foundations of this Mother Temple, was now gradually shaping itself into a heavy, metallic rhythm. It sounded like a company, perhaps a regiment, of heavy infantry, clad in armor, marching upstairs in close formation.

      There were continued cries of alarm, and more security people came pressing up behind the officer in the doorway.

      Hyrcanus started to come around from behind his desk, and then went back.

      The guards now crowding the doorway were pushed aside. But not by human force.

      Bursting past them, into the Chairman’s private office, came moving gold, coins and bars and works of art, all moving as if alive. The yellow treasure had somehow been conglomerated, magically held together, into the shape of a huge and heavy many-legged creature, a gigantic centipede. At intervals this animation broke apart into separate marching figures, all headless, some in the shape of men and some of beasts. Whether in the form of many bodies or only one, the gold tramped upward and forward, the several shapes enlivened by Wood’s magic all glowing dull yellow in this chamber’s parsimonious light.

      The Director of Security, jabbering incantations, avoided the score of trampling golden legs. Gesturing, he intensified his magical efforts to undo what Wood was doing.

      But it was obvious to all that the Director’s attempted counterspells were failing miserably. Losing his temper, he rushed at his rival.

      That was a serious mistake.

      Halfway toward the object of his wrath, the Director slowed, then staggered to a halt. It was as if he had forgotten where he was going. Worse than that, it was as if he had almost forgotten how to walk.

      Turning now to Hyrcanus, and then to all the others in the room, a smile of infantile imbecility, the Director of Security sank slowly into the nearest chair. Simpering vacuously at nothing, he appeared ready to be entertained by whatever might happen next.

      His eyes lighted on the inexorably marching metal. “Gold,” the old man whispered, obviously delighted. “Pretty, pretty.”

      Meanwhile Wood, his arms folded, had turned away from the Director and sat down on the edge of Hyrcanus’s desk. He was watching the proceedings with an abstracted look, as if he were not personally very much involved. Tigris, taking her cue from her master, was now seated also, in a leather chair. From a purse that had appeared as if from nowhere she had actually brought out some knitting, with which she appeared