CHAPTER NINE

The Invisible Circle

VIII

Another hour passed. The sun slipped away beyond the right-hand edge of the world, while off to the left, the moon swam up to take its shift. A full moon, hazily orange as it crested the horizon; but the higher it rose, the crisper and bluer it became. In the twilight, the atmosphere around the mountain cooled, and the heatwaves wafting up from the caldera grew more vivid, distorting the downward view of dancing steam wraiths on the water. All the while the yellow light glided steadily up the mountain path.

Not a torch, Wilburn and Iddo decided; the glow was too unwavering. An oil lantern became their running hypothesis, until the thing drew near enough for them to judge that it was big—perhaps as big as Iddo—and egg-shaped, at which point Iddo declared it a Category-Q, explaining that this was a useful term for anything that you had no idea what category to put it in, animal, vegetable, mineral, magical—Category-Q—a big fat open-ended question.

The evening was still, and all was quiet save glugging of the lake. Then, gradually, a low murmur became audible and intensified to a rhythmic hum. It didn’t sound like human voices—but it was, for as the Category-Q ascended from the lower jungle and continued up the less-foliated portion mountain, a procession of dark human figures became visible marching in single-file behind it. Lots of people… hundreds of them… chanting… a monotonous, droning chant, wordless at this distance, and eerily emotionless. It made the hairs on the back of Wilburn’s neck stand up. The sound reminded him, in an unpleasant way, of insects.

Iddo had gone very silent on their mental channel. They’re all psychovates…” he thought at last. “My word—this has to be some kind of record. The entire group is manifesting a collective shield, and I haven’t found the slightest flaw in it. That’s something only a handful of elite units in the Argylonian military are capable of… but never in such large numbers.

How many are there?

Can’t say. Their shield prevents me from discovering even that basic information without drawing attention to myself. The naked eye suggests at least a hundred, but there’s no telling how far the procession may stretch back into the jungle. What in the world has the PROVED gotten us into?

Are you gonna have to fight them? Wilburn wondered. He had gotten the impression that this was Alfajean’s plan.

Not if I can help it, Iddo thought grimly. On the contrary, I am probing their defenses with the utmost stealth. To provoke such a formidable assembly would be suicidal… like kicking the proverbial hornet’s nest…

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IX

By the time the Category-Q reached the summit of the volcano, the moon hung in the middle of the sky. Wilburn and Iddo could now see the object plainly: a bulbous blob of amber the size of the rain barrel at the cottage. Its shape was rounded and organic, its color a deep golden orange, and it was perfectly translucent, like a glass of whiskey held up to the light; except in this case, the light source was the Q itself. Looking at it, you couldn’t tell if the thing was indeed liquid like whiskey, or if it was solid like a gemstone. The glowing blob floated, clearly by magic, at the head of the procession, followed by someone wearing either an all-yellow robe or an all-white robe that looked yellow in the Q-light. Everyone else wore black and yellow striped robes, and all were hooded, so no faces could be seen—as far as the light revealed, at least—the line of chanters twisted backward down the mountain into darkness, where its end remained obscure.

The golden blob led the way over the rim of the basin and down the snaking trail to the lake—then out over the boiling water—and just when it seemed the Yellow Guy would march straight in and be cooked, the water parted, creating a dry path to the base of the ziggurat. It should’ve been like walking on a skillet, but the chanters never broke stride, stepping to the rhythm of their chant like a military unit on parade. This didn’t have the feel a military affair though, no, nothing so humdrum. The stripe-clad figures flowed across the lake with a dreamy, fluid grace, like dancers—but were any dancers ever so well synchronized? The way the crowd moved gave Wilburn the heebie-jeebies. It was the way a field of grass moves in the wind… as if the crowd wasn’t made up of individuals.

What are they saying? Wilburn wondered. It sounded like a foreign language. He could tell it was the same phrase over and over, or possibly one long word. Six equally stressed syllables in a fixed order, any one of which could have been the beginning or the end of the series. It sounded like: Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

All languages are branches of the same tree, Iddo thought, and the sap of this figurative language-tree is magic. Language and magic are very nearly the same thing. Our entire world is language—we ourselves made of words in very literal sense—but we’ll save that discussion for another time. Suffice to say that every magician, no matter their knack, receives the Gift of Tongues when their powers manifest. The Gift of Tongues grants us the ability to speak and understand all spoken languages in the universe. It doesn’t apply to written text, though—that’s why it’s called the Gift of Tongues rather than Pens. Nor does the Gift confer new knowledge. It is merely a translation mechanism. Any word a magician knows one language, they know in every language, right down to dialect and accent.

Ohhh—that’s why Buttrom said that I’m from wherever he’s from!

Indubitably. Now, I’m not sure if you noticed, Wilburn, but my vocabulary is nearly as plenteous as my fur coat—so the fact this chant means nothing to me means that its reference is to an obscure subject indeed. I suspect it is a name… the name of a person, or perhaps… an entity.

“Ink-hi-ya—” Wilburn began, speaking aloud with the chanters just to get the feel of the the syllables.

“Careful,” Iddo interrupted him. “A wizard’s words have power, my boy. Beware the law of unintended consequences.”