“Not hit them with them, no,” Aurelianus agreed cheerily. “Come on, now, finish your beer while I go tell Marko to saddle us a couple of horses.”
Duffy was happy to comply, for Epiphany was due back before long; and she’d shown a tendency, lately, to burst into tears every time he spoke to her. The most recent example had occurred in the dining room during dinner.
Shuddering at the uncomfortable recollection, he drained the beer and followed Aurelianus outside. He helped Marko saddle the second horse, and mounted quickly. “After you,” he said to the sorcerer with as sweeping a bow as is possible on horseback.
They rode out of the north gate, and then let the horses choose their own lazy pace southeast across fields of new grass starred with peonies. After about two miles Aurelianus bore left, toward the willow-banked southern arm of the canal, and soon they were drawing to a halt in the waving green shade.
“What do you intend to do with that box of rocks?” asked Duffy finally; he hadn’t inquired during the ride, not wanting to let Aurelianus know how curious he was.
“Make rain magic. They’re meteoric stones—bits of falling stars,” replied the sorceror, dismounting and scrambling down to the water’s edge.
“Rain magic, hey?” Duffy peered up into the cloudless blue vault of the sky. “A likely day for it,” he observed. “Wait up.”
“Hurry. It’s just about noon right now.”
When he reached the water Aurelianus crouched down, and waved Duffy to be silent. He dipped a cupped hand into the water and sipped some of it, then rubbed the rest into the dirt. He opened the wooden chest—Duffy, peering over the old man’s shoulder, was distinctly disappointed to see the little raisin-wrinkled lumps it contained—and sprinkled a second handful of water over the stones. He closed the lid, stood up with the chest, and began to shake it rhythmically, whispering in a language Duffy was careful not to listen to.
The willow branches began swaying in the still air as the percussive rattle took on a faster and more complicated pace. Soon the leaves were rustling together, and though Duffy tried not to notice it, he had to admit the new sound was in the same rhythm.
Then the tempo of the shaken stones quickened again—it was almost twice as fast—and then again. Aurelianus’ hands were moving so fast that they were actually just a blur to the sight, and no intervals could be heard in the rattling: it was just a loud, textured hiss. The thrashing willow branches were being all but ripped from the trees.
Duffy took an involuntary step back, for the sustained pitch of it all seemed suddenly to be a line of entry for something, something that existed always at such a pitch. The air was tense and close, and Duffy felt the pregnant tingle of the moment between a gasp and a sneeze.
Then with a shout the wizard flung the box at the water. It opened in mid-air and the stones ripped up the water like grape-shot, and a gust of wind from behind them accompanied the shout with such abrupt force that Duffy nearly followed the stones into the canal.
The burst of wind whipped past the two crouching men for a dozen seconds; then Duffy’s hair fell back into place and the willows went limp, though the Irishman could see the trees flailing further south. After a few seconds they too were still.
Aurelianus sat down heavily, letting his hands rest on the ground. “Ah,” he sighed after a minute of open-mouthed panting. “There are... many more powerful spirits, but these rain spirits certainly are among the most... energetic.” He started to stand, then thought better of it. “And they demand a good deal of energy on the part of their conjurors, too.” He lifted his trembling hands and peered at them. “It must have been almost precisely noon when I started,” he said, “for them to have come through so quickly and easily. The last time I did this trick, several years ago, I had to shake the damned box for nearly half an hour.”
Duffy watched the wooden chest bobbing slowly away downstream. “Noon?” he repeated absently. “What’s so special about noon?”
Aurelianus tried standing up again, and made it this time. “All these magics involve a breaking or violation of the natural laws,” he told Duffy, “and those laws relax just a little, are weakest, at noon and midnight.”
Duffy was about to frame some statement about himself being weakest at those hours, when Aurelianus started energetically toward the horses. “I’m glad I got that done,” the old wizard said. “With the kind of pace Ibrahim has been keeping up, I’m afraid this magic will be impossible before long. But those rains should considerably hamper Suleiman’s northward progress.” He swung into the saddle.
The Irishman followed suit. “Why impossible? Will there soon be no more noons or midnights?”
“No, but when two adepts, such as Ibrahim and myself, come into close, proximate conflict with one another, a deadlock of magic results—like two knife fighters gripping each other’s wrists. Whole categories of higher magic are damped out by the disharmony of our overlapping auras. When that happens, the issue has to be settled by swords and cannon; sorcery is stifled.” He turned his horse about and nudged it up the bank to the level expanse of the grassy plain.
“Ah,” said Duffy, following him and squinting in the suddenly unobstructed sunlight. “So when the Turks get here you won’t be able to... say... send a flock of giant wasps out at them, or turn the ground to quicksand under their feet?”
“I’m afraid not. In fact this, today, may be the last bit of major sorcery I’ll be able to do until it’s over; I’ve already noticed a trace of resistance in certain everyday spells and tricks.”
“Like that candle you tried to light a few weeks ago, that blew up?”
“Yes. In such a deadlock of contending adepts, minor hearth-and-kitchen magic can still operate, but even it is much more difficult. And the big stuff, as I say, is out.”
“I don’t know why you old lads even bother to show up, then,” remarked Duffy. “What’s the use of you, if this deadlock is completely unbreakable?”
“Well... virtually unbreakable,” corrected Aurelianus. “Why, to advise the rest of you, I suppose. I think before too long you’ll be Arthur completely, all the time, and you’ll... he’ll... need coaching and re-educating.”
Duffy had said nothing, though his eyes narrowed; and by the time they’d returned to the Zimmermann he had made a decision. Gathering together his few belongings and Eilif’s sword, he quietly vacated the premises. Eilif was happy to sign the Irishman on as a member of his company, and Duffy took up residence with the landsknecht mercenaries, who were at that time quartered in the north barracks, near the Wollzelle.
A month or so later word had officially reached western Europe that Suleiman was advancing toward Austria with seventy-five thousand men. Charles had been too busy pursuing his conflicts with the French king to send troops to Vienna, so his brother Ferdinand had gone before the Diet of Spires to beg aid from the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and to point out to them that if Austria were to fall to the Turks, they would be moving on into Bavaria with little delay. And, despite the pressing Lutheran controversy, Protestants and Catholics had agreed on providing a Reichshilfe, a collection of troops for the defense of the empire. A month was spent assembling this force, but finally on the twenty-fourth of September, 1529, Count Nicholas von Salm had arrived in Vienna with eight thousand professional fighting men and took command of the defense. He’d beaten Suleiman to the city by only three days—and if it hadn’t been for the inexplicably heavy rains that had dogged the Sultan’s entire progress northwest along the Danube, von Salm would have arrived much too late to be anything more than a harrassing spectator at the siege of Vienna.