The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,4
of dogwood and may. Somewhere in the woods a robin called, the sweet notes a comforting reminder of the thickets of the Drowned Lands, where for seven years he had served the Ladies of the Moon as scribe. A gray hare flickered momentarily into view at the top of the bank, but bounded away at the roaring approach of the vehicle they called a car.
Rhion had to grin at the thought of the car. It was a conveyance straight out of a fairy tale, moving, without beast to draw it, at speeds that covered in an hour the distance it would take to journey in a day—except, of course, that no talespinner he’d ever encountered in any marketplace in the Forty Civilized Realms had ever thought to describe such a marvel as being so raucously noisy or so comprehensively smelly.
Beside him, von Rath went on, “Germany is the only realm now whose rulers believe in magic, who will support wizards and them give them aid and help. And now her enemies have declared war on her and are massing on our borders, ready to attack as soon as the weather dries. It is essential that we recover magic, learn what became of it and how we can bring it back. For, if they conquer, even what belief still exists will perish and there will be nothing left—only those mechanistic bureaucracies, those believers in nothing, who seek to destroy what they cannot understand.”
In the front seat the young blond titan named Horst Eisler who had been assigned as their driver by the Protection Squad—Schutzstaffel, in the harsh German tongue, shortened, as the Germans did with all long words, to SS—gazed straight ahead at the broken black cut of the pavement where it passed through the hills. Baldur, sitting beside the driver, was as usual twisted half round in his seat so that he could hang onto von Rath’s every word. The driver slowed, easing the car around a place where last night’s rain had washed a great slide of mud and boulders down from the twelve-foot banks that hemmed in this stretch of road; because of a car’s speed and power, it required a deal more concentration to drive than a horse and, moreover, required a far better surface to drive upon.
To Rhion’s right, Auguste Poincelles was arguing with Gall, who sat perched on the little jump seat that folded down from the door. “Of course Witches Hill was a place of power, a holy place!” Gall was fulminating in his shrill Viennese accent, his silver mane and beard streaming in the wind. “It lies upon a crossing of the leys, the energy-tracks that cover all the earth in a net of energy. Moreover, upon the night of the last full moon I slept among the time-runneled menhirs there, among the Dancing Stones, and a vision was visited unto me of eldritch Druids and olden warriors with the sacred swastika tattooed upon their broad breasts...”
Poincelles let out a crack of rude laughter. “Druids in Germany? You’ve been reading Bulwer-Lytton’s novels again, Jacobus.” He took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. Most of the people in this world were addicted to the inhaled smoke of cured tobacco leaves, and everything—cars, houses, furniture, and clothing—stank of it.
“Scoff if you like,” the old wizard replied calmly, and his pale, fanatic eyes took on a faraway gleam. “I saw them, I tell you. Upon those stones they performed sacrifices that raised the power to keep the mighty armies of Rome at bay.”
Poincelles laughed again, shaking back his greasy black forelock. “Ah, now when Mussolini invades us we’ll know just what to do!”
Rhion sighed inwardly, not surprised at the constant bickering of the three wizards under von Rath’s command. Wizards in his own world squabbled constantly. He wondered, with a stab of grief and regret, what Jaldis would have made of them.
He wondered, too, when they reached the place called of old Witches Hill, whether Jaldis would have been able to detect the ancient magic Gall claimed had been raised upon that spot.
The hill itself was clearly artificial, standing alone at one end of an overgrown meadow to the east of the long pine-cloaked ridge that backed Schloss Torweg. As they waded toward it through the knee-deep grass, Rhion studied the low, flattened mound, guessing that there had probably once been an energy-collecting chamber of some kind underneath—it was a good guess that if ley-lines did exist in this world, this was raised on