by Eve Forward
Fitting the crystal into his sling, he glanced around to be sure no one was watching, then lobbed it as high and far as he could, sending it tumbling silently into one of the largest clusters of tents, the one with the distinctive shape and guards of a storehouse for Barigan whiskey.
Sam, Blackmail, and Robin on their hill had a splendid view of a sudden huge ball of fire that erupted from a corner of the camp, with a deafening double-explosion and a gout of black smoke and crimson flame. Shouts rang out, barbarians ran with their fur garments aflame. Arcie had learned well what sort of tactics worked with the Plainsmen who scorned metal. The priestesses in the open temple reacted in shock, then quickly scooped up dippers of the water and ran to the scene of the holocaust to heal the injured. The instant they had all vanished, a small quick figure scampered into the enclosure, waved up at them, and knelt at the pool, filling a pair of waterskins.
“I told you he was crazy,” said Sam. Robin nodded, ears flicking.
Arcie filled the last waterskin, noticing as he did so that the dragonfire burns on his hands cooled and healed instantly when the water splashed on them. He quickly plugged the waterskins and hastened back out of the temple.
The camp was in chaos. As he ran, he splashed himself with some of the water, redoubling his speed as his wounds healed.
At last a winded but healthy Barigan tumbled into the grassy hiding place of the four companions. He handed Sam one of the waterskins and tucked the other one into his belt. The assassin unstoppered the skin, splashed a bit on himself, then, scolded by the raven, quickly poured a heavy dose over Valerie’s broken body. The water tingled on his skin, and he felt his wound closing, his broken rib moving painlessly back into place and knitting. Despite his loyalty to the Druid, he had to admit that the power of the healing deity was far more impressive than her slower, herbal formulas. A faint blue mist covered both him and Valerie and then vanished; he looked up.
“Robin? Blackmail? Either of you hurt?” The two shook their heads, Robin still watching the flames in shock.
“You blew up their tents,” he said after a moment.
“And they hadn’t even done anything to you!”
“Aye, but they would have,” Arcie replied, with a wink. Valerie stirred and sat up in a faint cloud of soot that sent her coughing.
“Where am I?” she gasped. The raven flew with relieved clucks and alighted on her shoulder. She ran a hand through her scorched dark hair, and a large swath of it fell away, leaving her with ragged-cropped locks.
She stared at the chunk in horror.
“Outside another barbarian encampment,” replied Sam tersely. “And if you’re feeling all right now, I think we’d better get moving.”
Valerie looked down at the milling campsite. “You never said a truer word, assassin.”
“I try,” he replied modestly. “Let’s go ... toward the sea.”
They hurried away from the smoke and screams of the camp and fled across the fields.
When they had come as far as they felt was necessary, they fell exhausted onto the turf. “Rest!” croaked Arcie.
“Them mighty feats of daring takes a powerful lot out of a fellow.”
“Agreed,” said Valerie. “I think it would be best if we slept for a few hours, then continued on in the evening.”
“We’re going to go get the Druid before we go on,” informed Robin, rummaging in his pack for something to eat. Valerie looked like she might argue, but then nodded.
“All right. Blackmail, would you take watch?” she asked. The knight nodded his helm and sat back in the grass, watching the fields and sky as the others rested.
At last evening fell. Valerie looked up at the pale sky and at the moon. “We’ll have to hurry,” she said nervously.
“There isn’t a whole lot of time left.”
“And where might we be heading?” asked Arcie, looking into the distance at the dark shadow of the sea.
“There are a whole range of plains, and, if we follow the beast on to Ein, a haystack of mountains to find a dragon-needle in. Where might we begin to seek?”
“I’ll have to work on that,” said Valerie with a sigh. “I doubt we’ll find the dragon on Sei’cks, there is no cover for it. Dragons like cover. It will have flown on to Ein; there are a lot of places for a dragon to go in that foul land. I shall have to use magic.”
“Magic? How?” asked Robin. All he’d seen of Valerie’s power had been various blasts of death and destruction, and he was beginning to wonder if she could do any other sort of magic.
“There are various scrying spells, seeking spells ... I only hope the wench is smart enough or hurt enough that she is unable to use her concealment powers.”
“Seems to me that yon great lizard took care that the lassie was unharmed,” commented Arcie. “As though she were wanted live.” Blackmail nodded in silent agreement.
“She’d better not be hurt, or-” began Sam angrily, but Valerie shushed him.
“There is no time for your romantic heroics, assassin fool. Find me water, preferably old, rank, muddy stale stuff; this magic healing water is useless.”
After some clumsy searching in the darkness, a suitable puddle was located, and Valerie filled her silver eating bowl with the brackish water. She then pulled her hood over her face, and knelt in the deepest shadow of a small hill.
“One unfortunate side effect of this spell is it may draw the attention of any other people scrying in the same general area ... but without the Druid’s magic to cover our presence, we show up like coals in the snow as it is. My own concealing magic, dark as it is, is worse than nothing in this Light world. So, be on your guard, and if any mages come teleporting in, I trust you to kill them.”
She then clasped her hand, with broken fingernails, around the midnight oval of her Darkportal, and gently touched the surface of the water in the bowl with her other hand. She shifted the bowl slightly, and seemed to fall into a deep trace, as the others exchanged nervous glances and took up watchful positions. Nightshade sat on his mistress’s shoulder and watched everyone with a beady eye, hissing if they came too close. The air around Valerie tingled slightly, as she softly whispered words of power in the language of Nathauan magic. It was a sound like snakes slowly moving over gravel.
The spell of Seeking was in four parts. Valerie bound the first quickly, and rather incautiously; it was the ward around the caster’s mind and body that shielded from mind or magic while the spell was in progress. She bound her mind with a loose mental tripwire, more energyconserving than the full wards, and began the second part of the spell.
This magic was to free her consciousness from her body, similar to what Kaylana had done in reaching out to call the stampede. A difficult task, as living beings were usually very concerned with keeping the body and soul together, and much patient meditation had to be done before the spirit could detach. Valerie was out of practice; it took her over half an hour just to relax enough for her mind to begin to slide free, loose and numb in the astral wind. She had long since lost track of where she was or her surroundings, but she could now feel an openness about her, similar to the way Sam felt when the shadows parted for him. The dark bowl of water filled her vision, engulfed it in its swirling shadows. She was ready.
The third part of the spell was second in importance.
This was where the location of the sought object would be determined. Valerie concentrated on the Druid, trying to remember everything she could; it was difficult, she’d never paid much attention to the backwoods female, since she was obviously fairly harmless for all her Druidic power. Red hair, yes, green eyes, taller than herself, the dun robes, the imperious voice.
Confused images swirled, her vision wavered wildly across the edges of reality. She began to get angry, then calmed herself. Anger was dangerous at this stage. She must remain calm, retain her concentration. Perhaps she should try a different tack. Instead of seeking the Druid’s physical body, Valerie now sought the distinctive pattern of her au
ra. The only aura in the world with the strange, gyroscopic spinning of a soul struggling for utter balance.
The villains in the real world of crickets and a soft wind watched from a safe distance. It seemed to Arcie, the roost intent watcher, that the water in the bowl was moving and shifting and changing, although the sorceress’s fingers were still.
The response was instant. A whirling green-brown light was easily resolved into the shape of the Druid. She leaned against a rough stone wall, chained perhaps, very still. Her staff was nowhere to be seen. The image flickered with a faint red-gold light that seemed to shift and flux. Now, to pull out, to back up the distance to see the location...
But her astral vision suddenly began to be crowded. As she focused, the picture was interwoven with thousands of indistinct forms, swirling and screaming an endless ancient agony; not ghosts, but the psychic impression of great pain and death so strong that it was burned into the rocks. The confusion sent her reeling back and she faltered, her imperfect concentration shaking-twists and warps of tunnels and stairs and more and more shades of ancient life and death, dwarves and humans and above all the shrill, screaming death-cry of an evil dragon.
Valerie managed to gather in the reins of her sanity and consciousness. She was drifting in the darkness, instinct having pulled her away from the vision. What now, she wondered. She felt confused, and faltered, beginning to lose herself...
A distant pain startled her awake, and she looked. A ghostly raven hovered before her, flapping indistinct wings. It flew a short distance, then returned, drawing her forward.
With Nightshade’s help she slowly returned to her senses and was able to begin the most important part of the spell-the ending that would bring her spirit back to her body. If it were not for Nightshade’s soul-link, she might have been lost forever... She slowly pulled herself together, locked her spirit back in her body as she felt Nightshade return to his, and opened her eyes.
“I know where she is,” she stated flatly. Her body ached from being still so long, and the wind ruffled her short hair as she poured the flat, dead water out.
“Where? Where? Where!?” demanded Sam, running over.
“You aren’t going to like this,” said Valerie, standing.
“It doesn’t matter! Where?” The others were watching him, Arcie with leering amusement, Robin with his usual confusion, and Blackmail as calm as ever. Sam managed to control himself and look cool and dignified again.
“She is in Putak-Azum,” reported Valerie.
There was dead silence. Then Sam spoke up.
“You’re right. I don’t like it.”
“Putak-Azum?” asked Robin. “Where the Heroes searched for and found the fabled Necklace of Calaina? Putak-Azum, the lair of the dark dragon Kazikuckia and her hordes of evil reptile-men?”
“The same, centaur ... except the Necklace is long gone, Kazikuckia was slain, as you may recall, by the Heroes, and all the reptile-men were defeated with the aid of the Dwarven folk of the mountains. The place is little more than a dusty wreck by now, I should imagine,” Valerie said, looking thoughtful.
“Well, if it’s got another dragon now, a pinky-gold one for example, I’m all for visiting it,” replied Sam, balancing one of his daggers on his fingertip. Blackmail nodded in agreement.. “Where do we get in?”
“There is only one entrance, besides the dragon’s way,” explained Valerie. “The doorway lies in the wall below the Giant’s Crag, according to legend.”
“Only one way in, hmm?” said Sam, thoughtfully sheathing his dagger. “I don’t like the sound of that. What’s the dragon’s way?”
“A cave in the side of one of the pinnacles, above a thousand-foot vertical climb with an overhang of polished granite two hundred yards long,” replied the sorceress.
Sam tried to look cool and pensive.
“Well,” he said at last, “I could make it, but I imagine the rest of you might have a hard time. All right, the front door it is then.”
“Hear, thank you so very much kindly,” replied Arcie, with more than a trace of sarcasm. They gathered themselves together and began the long march to the crossing.
“Besides,” said Robin, picking his way carefully so as not to trip his hooves on anything in the dimness, “how can it be a trap? No one knows we’re here.” I’ve told a lie, he thought to himself, with a touch of pride. Maybe he was cut out for this spy business. Now all that would remain would be theft, to steal a Segment...
The journey took several days. What was a brief flight for a dragon was a long walk for humans and a centaur. The channel between Ein and Sei’cks was quite narrow, and they boarded a ferry at the small city that flourished at this vital nexus. The flat countryside vanished abruptly as they turned inland into Ein; after but a few miles of farmland the great jagged Svergald Mountains reared up from the landscape, their peaks black and foreboding in the twilight in which the villains traveled.
Sam was reminded of the myths surrounding the creation of the Six Lands: from all the other continents on the world, the gods had taken huge chunks and lumped them together and tossed them into the sea in a rough ring. The Six Lands were the most magical of all the world and were woven through with some sense of cosmic importance; if anything vital happened, it would happen somewhere in the Six Lands. One last Test, less than a month until the end, for good or evil. Sam smiled wryly at the idea. Good and Evil! He no longer knew what to think about the words anymore.
To the south, across a wide sea, was the lazy, foolish land of Dous, his birthplace and where this had all started. He found himself missing his tiny, cramped room in the abandoned Guild, the cool wine served in the Frothing Otter, the twisty rolls that the vendors would sell on Jasper’s Feast, to honor the patron Hero who had been of a slightly sneaky nature himself... probably why Arcie and I managed to last that long there, he thought.
And Kimi, too, had still retained her mind. Sam looked at the remains of his tunic, cut in the same style as the one Jasper had worn all through the War ... almost as ragged too. What would the Wilderkin Hero do, he wondered, were he alive today? What if he had survived after the War, and become Lord Mayor as they had wanted him too? Would his descendants chase us with horns and hounds?
A lot of organization is needed to move an army around, especially when the terrain is as inhospitable as most of Ein. Tasmene did not have Fenwick’s luxury of a stable of mages to help his troop movements. But with stout Northerman guides and much patience, they slowly made their way to the eastern borders of Ein. The only true wizard in Tasmene’s employ was his brother, a bluerobe named Tesubar who had accompanied his brother on many adventures, and been changed in the process.
Some of his experiences had begun to darken him, but Mizzamir’s intercession at the request of Tasmene had left Tesubar with nothing worse than a slight irritability and a tendency, when under stress, to speak with a harsh rasp to his voice.
Tesubar was accompanying his brother now, and using his mental magic to scout the way ahead. It was while drifting in this ethereal state some days ago that his mind brushed against the edges of another, so dark and evil he withdrew, unseen, and had watched in magical silence as the other hand searched, searched for something ... And then, days later, he sent his own mind out to search for that one again, and found a surprise.
Too haughty to divulge his reasons to his brother and the stupid grunt fighters of the army, Tesubar steered them in the right direction for his purposes, and then, one night as they camped on a high plateau, the mage scornfully separated himself and his brother from the bawdy campfire singing of the ranks. He drew Tasmene aside to the edge of the plateau, where the setting sun cast stark shadows into the valley below.
“What is it, Tesubar?” asked Tasmene, as they came away. “Having another one of your insights?”
“No more insight than intelligence, brother,” said Tesubar softly, drawing his blue robes close about him.
“Prince Fenwick is a fine woodsman, but he is a fool to
think he can track a Nathauan like a rabbit. If we had continued as he would have us, we should have passed by our target, and been left sitting with the Verdant Company in the middle of empty plains.”
“Thunderbolts! I’d thought we were heading in a rather odd direction!” exclaimed Tasmene, rubbing his brow. “We are near Putak-Azum, aren’t we? Why ever in the name of Cror did you bring us this way?”
“Because, brother,” sighed Tesubar, “our quarry even now prepares to enter into the vaults of Putak-Azum. It is my opinion that, odd as it may seem, they wish to rescue the Druid captured by Prince Fenwick’s foolish pink dragon.”
Much long travel had brought them deep into the stony heart of Ein. Valerie had saved them much time by locating and navigating old abandoned Dwarven mining trails and the occasional brief tunnel through a cliffside. Robin was a constant liability, either shivering in terror of the heights of mountain trails, or cringing and gasping in claustrophobic tunnels. Fortunately, neither of these proved to last long, and the occasional sharp word from one of the villains would terrify the minstrel into continuing.
He kept up a running string of melodies on his harp.
For a long time after, the sound of a harp would bring back memories to Arcie of the torchlight flickering on stone walls, and the centaur’s shadow playing and jiggering to the echoing notes, all combined with the terrified reek of horse sweat.
Robin was slowly working his way through his entire repertoire of songs, ballads, jigs, reels, canticles, lays, poems, and poseys, about one quarter of which were the older songs. These were played rather haltingly; he seldom bothered to practice them, and forgot most of the words. The other three-quarters, which he could sing clearly and well despite his shaky voice, were various odes of the Heroes, or songs of the War or the Victory.
It was during one of these latter ballads that a certain phrase caught Sam’s attention. Robin sang,