Read Online The Doomfarers of Coramonde by Brian Daley - Free Book Online

listeners
were comparing thoughts on their new information when Gabrielle arrived.
    “What
preparations we can make have been made,” she said. “I’d like to speak to you,
Edward.” The two left, arm in arm once more.
    “Does your
sister find in me some offense?” the Prince asked Andre. “She seems hostile to
me.”
    “Perhaps,” was
the answer. “Or again, perhaps her motives are quite the opposite. Of all the
things beyond my power, reading my sister’s thoughts is foremost.”
    He took
Springbuck on a tour of the castle’s defenses. These were none too reassuring,
though one could scarcely hope for better under the circumstances. They
discovered a number of the men drilling awkwardly in the courtyard, and the
Prince was so disgusted by their ineptitude that he took charge and corrected
their more obvious lapses.
    Others joined,
and soon he was putting a sizable body of tyros through their paces in such
fashion that one might almost have thought that they knew what they were doing.
    With a flash of
inspiration he drew rude diagrams on the wall with a charred stick and showed
them where armor of various types was most vulnerable to arrow, pike or sword.
Andre slipped away as he began to explain the technique of pushing scaling
ladders away from a rampart, undaunted by the fact that he himself had never
done it.
    When reliefs
were changed at the walls, those who came off duty were eager to try their
hand, and the practice continued. There was no sign of any activity from the
troops occupying Erub, except that a company of light horse kept watch on the
castle from a nearby rise.
    The Prince
began thinking of ways for the lot of them to escape under cover of night. He
stopped his impromptu lessons when the afternoon grew too hot for them, and
once more sought Andre deCourteney, who was thoughtfully gnawing a bit of
jerked meat, sitting on a crenel.
    “We cannot
leave tonight,” the wizard said in answer to Springbuck’s ideas. “We can’t
afford to be caught in the open come dawn.”
    The son of
Surehand leaned against another crenel and waited.
    “Van Duyn,
Gabrielle and I can deal with those soldiers out there if the necessity
arrives. For that matter, the two magicians with them don’t worry us overly.”
    “But there’s
Yardiff Bey,” the Prince ventured.
    “But there’s
Bey,” Andre agreed. “He can’t touch us directly with spells, because of this.”
    From his shirt
he drew forth a chain of some black metal from which depended a shimmering,
chatoyant gem the size of a large grape, set in a simple retainer of silver.
The Prince sensed that he was in the presence of an object of tremendous
consequence.
    “Calundronius,”
Andre explained. “Because of it, my sister and I are alive. Because of it, no
one can spend a spell against us directly, or against anyone close to us whom
we choose to protect. But Bey intends to destroy us himself, nevertheless.
Tomorrow, just at dawn, we have learned, he’ll summon a being of the
half-world: Chaffinch, a winged fire-dragon who is proof, like this gemstone,
against enchantments.”
    Springbuck
couldn’t frame any remark, and so gulped air and listened.
    Andre felt of
his rough face with the back of his hand as he returned Calundronius to its
shaggy resting place. “Well, we think Van Duyn may have the solution here. Bey
will summon Chaffinch in Earthfast or some other place far from here and send
him against us. Van Duyn’s idea is to conjure up a defense.
    “Edward, you
see—or, will see—comes from another reality than ours. ‘It’s simple, Andre,’ he
told me once, ‘I just hail from different probabilities than you.’ Don’t let
that sour look fool you; he must have his little jests, that one.
    “At any pass,
Edward’s learned a good portion of sorcery from Gabrielle and me since he came
here and contacted us. He has a peculiar, sideways aptitude for it. He says
that there are, in the world he left behind, machines of war that could