"Well, it could happen, but I don't look for it right away," Ingeros replied. "Seems like the sheep have scraped off some of the snow there and found pretty decent grazing underneath. The Khamorth go where their flocks take them half the time—more than half, by the good god. If the sheep are happy, the plainsmen are happy, too. And so, sorcerous sirs, right now I'd say it's up to you."
"We'll do what we can," Koubatzes said. None of the other wizards disagreed or tried to take pride of place from him. They recognized that he was the best they had. When they weren't complaining about how high they were on horseback or how cold it was, they'd talked shop on the way out from Skopentzana. Rhavas knew something about sorcery. Few well-educated priests didn't; one order of monks, in fact, specialized in weather-working wizardry. That also involved astrology, or perhaps astronomy, in ways Rhavas didn't fully understand. He followed these mages well enough when they went on about the laws of similarity and contagion. As they got more technical, though, they might as well have started using the Haloga language.
Ingeros slid down from his horse. One of the other guards took the animal's reins. Ingeros reached into a saddlebag. He pulled out a white robe with a hood, which he draped over the clothes he already had on. He walked through the snow toward the top of the rise. As he neared it, he pulled the hood up over his head and crawled on his belly. The hood and robe did for him what white feathers did for ptarmigan and white fur for hare and ferret and fox: they made him disappear against the snowy background. He could spy on the Khamorth without their seeing him.
Koubatzes also dismounted. Before doing anything else, he paused to rub his hindquarters. Rhavas fundamentally approved of the gesture. "Methodios!" Koubatzes said, and pointed to a younger wizard.
"What do you need?" Methodios asked.
"You have a good deal of skill sniffing out wards," Koubatzes said. "Suppose you see what sort of protections the plainsmen are using."
"Right." Methodios took what looked like a stone with a stout needle through it from his saddlebag. "A lodestone," he remarked to his fellows. Along with the piercing for the needle, it had another for a fine silver chain. Methodios swung it by the chain, first this way, then that. He murmured a charm and made passes with his free hand.
Suddenly it seemed to Rhavas that the lodestone was swinging on its own, not through Methodios' agency. It described a complex pattern in the air. Methodios and the mages near him watched that path with careful—indeed, fascinated—attention. "How interesting," one of the wizards said, at the same time as another was remarking, "How unusual." The independent motion was interesting to Rhavas, too, but he could not have said if it was unusual.
"Well?" Koubatzes asked a minute or so later.
"Well, I would say there are some wards," Methodios replied, and the other mages who'd eyed the lodestone nodded. He went on, "How strong they are . . . I'm not quite sure, I'm afraid. I'd have an easier time gauging it if this were Videssian wizardry." He looked down at the lodestone again. "My feeling is that the sorcery we planned before we set out from Skopentzana should do the job."
"Excellent!" Koubatzes breathed out a small fog bank with the word. "This is also my belief. How can the Skotos-loving barbarians hope to stand against us when we have not only the lord with the great and good mind but also our hard-won learning, lore, and wisdom in the other pan of the balance?"
"That is well said!" Rhavas clapped his mittened hands together. His applause yielded only a muffled thump. A moment later, he realized that was just as well. Real clapping might have carried to the Khamorth shepherds on the far side of the rise.
"I thank you, very holy sir." Koubatzes bowed to him. "We will proceed as we planned and as we've discussed, then. I have the amulet here."
He drew it out from under the thick wool tunic he wore beneath a wolfskin coat that gave him something of the look of a nomad himself. Gold gleamed in the shape of the sun-circle. So did two of the three stones set into the golden disk: an emerald of a green to make meadows despair and a rainbow-shimmering opal. The third stone, by contrast, seemed no more than a small, glassy pebble. Pointing to it, Rhavas asked, "What is that stone, and why do you set so much store by it?"
"This, very holy sir?" Koubatzes set his finger on the nondescript stone. The prelate nodded. Koubatzes said, "This is an authentic diamond. I know it doesn't look like much, but the reason for that is simple: it is so hard, it cannot be polished or shaped. No other stone will so much as scratch it; only another diamond can do that. There are no more than three or four in all of Skopentzana, I believe."
Rhavas was ready to believe it, too. Even in Videssos the city, diamonds were surpassingly rare—and prized for their rarity more than for their beauty. The prelate understood that; this stone was nothing out of the ordinary to look at. He asked, "What is its special virtue? Come to that, what are the magical virtues of the other two stones?"
Koubatzes gave him a crooked smile. "So you'd be a sorcerer, would you?"
"Not I." Rhavas shook his head. "By your courtesy, tell me what someone not initiated into your mysteries may know."
"I'll do that, and gladly," the wizard said. "The diamond, which as you see is fixed to the left side of the amulet, is good against enemies, madness, wild beasts, and cruel men. The emerald drives away enemies and makes them weak. The opal conduces to making one victorious over his adversaries."
"These are all good choices, then," Rhavas agreed. "May Phos grant success to the spells you make from your stones."
"My thanks," Koubatzes said. "Pray for us."
Rhavas did. Surely Phos would favor those who reverenced him against the savages from the steppe. "We bless thee, Phos, lord with the great and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor." He repeated the creed over and over again, bearing down on we and our. He saw no harm in reminding the good god who his true followers were. Phos already knew, of course—but still, why leave such things to chance?
Koubatzes set the amulet not on the snow but on a square of blue silk he carefully laid out so its corners pointed toward the cardinal directions. Rhavas didn't need to ask what the square represented. What could it be but the sky through which the sun traveled? Koubatzes stood south of the square. Other wizards took their places to the north and east and west. They began to chant.
Power thrummed in the air as the incantation built. Rhavas could feel it, as he could feel lightning build up in the air during a thunderstorm before the stroke fell. The wizards' hands moved in quick, intricate passes, sometimes in unison, sometimes with each sorcerer playing his own role to help form a larger and more potent whole.
The mages not directly involved in the conjuration watched avidly. Perhaps the four casting the spell drew on their strength in some way Rhavas could not see, or perhaps they were pupils learning from the performances of masters. Methodios' eyes in particular were wide and staring. Next to this, the magic he'd worked was as a boy's playhouse measured against the imperial palaces in Videssos the city.
Quite visibly, Koubatzes gathered himself. "Now!" he said, and hurled the power toward the west. Then he and all three of the mages who'd helped him staggered; one crumpled to the snow. Wizards had great power, but did not wield it without a price.
"What magic can do, magic has done," Rhavas said. "May the lord with the great and good mind bless our endeavor and crown it with success."
"So may it be." Koubatzes sounded even more drained than he looked; his voice might have been that of an old, old man. Despite the cold, sweat stood out on his face. "Food. Wine. Something to restore myself somewhat."