Errek rolled his eyes. “That’s a child’s rhyme. I’d rather depend on my axe.”
He forced a grin. “All the same, Syryk can’t harm us if we trust each other. Just don’t let his illusions rattle you.”
Errek snorted. “You know me better than that.” He stood and raised the long-handled Eolian axe. “Are you coming?”
“Right behind you.”
The oaken door gave with a shriek of splintered wood. Smoke billowed out, thick yellow smoke that burned their eyes and seared their throats. Five steps over the threshold, the smoke thinned. Two shadowy figures rushed toward them.
“I’ll take the big one!” Errek yelled.
“Illusion!” He flung his sword against Errek’s upraised axe handle. “Don’t strike!”
Errek stared at him, sulfur-induced tears streaming down his face, but the haze lifted, and the figures vanished. At their feet, inches from the toes of their boots, ran the edge of a wide rocky pit. Waves of heat welled up out of it—heavy, palpable waves of dry, intense heat.
“Ah, Drakkonwehr,” said a sibilant voice, “how you delight us with your company. Pity you’ve arrived at such an inopportune time.”
The mage stood in the middle of the pit, his arms spread over a stone pedestal on which a large circle of polished onyx lay like a tabletop. In the center stood a spiral of amber and silver. Enclosed within the spiral stood not an orb, as he’d expected, but something much more dangerous—a perfectly faceted column of crystal thick as a sapling and longer than a hand. Only the ancients—Black Mages and Hero Mages both—had mastered the power of a crystal column. And this one was already pulsing with color—brown, green, red, yellow—first one then another surging to dominance. Transfixed, he watched the colors dance in a rhythm that invaded his hearing and found itself an echo in the beat of his blood.
“Come to see me raise the dragon, have you?” the sibilant voice said.
He tore his gaze from the hypnotic display and focused on the mage. The magician’s teeth gleamed in a thin, pale face. He was neither tall nor as old as one with his skill—or audacity—should be. More illusions.
“No, Syryk. We’ve come to stop you.” Gripping the Sword of Drakkonwehr and his shield, he leaped into the pit.
He landed heavily, the heat a physical force pressing against him from all sides. He breathed, but his lungs would not expand. Waves of hot air seared his face, and he staggered, momentarily disoriented.
“Durren,” said a voice, softly, at his side.
“Ayliss,” he gasped.
A young woman clad in white shimmered before him. Her amber hair was fastened into a circlet of braids. About her wrists, throat, and forehead hung finely wrought chains of silver set with oval stones that glowed a deep, dark glossy red against translucent skin.
“Ayliss, how—? Why?”
“You have to understand,” she murmured. “Let me explain.”
He staggered backwards, eluding her outstretched hand. “Illusion.” Blinking, he stared past her shimmering image and tried to focus on the table. Somewhere in the heat-distorted beams of light he would find the mage and his column of power. He had to break it—that much he remembered clearly from Owender’s History. Break the crystal and break the chant, and thereby break the spell.
An anguished cry of “Ayliss!” sounded from above.
“Illusion, Errek!” he screamed. “Don’t touch her!”
But Errek, still on the rim of the pit, lowered his axe and his shield. “Ayliss,” he said to the shimmering woman in white.
“Errek.” She held out her hands to him.
“No!” He lunged toward Errek, but his boots stuck to the pit floor. His shield hit the rough-hewn rock first. His cheek smashed into the metal rim. The Sword of Drakkonwehr, clattering against the stone, shook free of his hand. He lay for a moment, dazed, until the floor’s heat seared through his tunic and breeches. With a cry of pain, he staggered to his feet.
—Trust me. For once in your life, please—
“Ayliss?” He turned automatically to the voice he knew. But no one stood there. Nothing loomed behind him but stone and heat and emptiness.
Gall rose in his throat. He clenched his jaw against it. Don’t be a fool! She’s an illusion. Or worse.
“Why did you do it?” he snarled, unable to stop the words. “Was it the jewels? Or the power?” He shook his head, but the images before his eyes still wavered like wheat in a fickle wind.
On the far side of the pit, the woman in white was ascending a narrow staircase, approaching Errek with a look of love on her face. He blinked, stared at her outstretched hands and blinked again. An image flickered in and out of view, an image of something held in one slender hand—no!—one large, heavy-wristed hand.
“Errek!” he screamed. “It’s the—”
“Ayliss,” Errek said, and embraced her.
The hand moved—in a quick, thrusting motion.
A cry ripped from his throat. He seized his knife and flung it at the woman in white.
There was a moment when time seemed suspended, when the knife, rotating gracefully hilt over tip, floated through the air while nothing else could move. Even his hand couldn’t complete its downward arc. Nor could sound, rolling like thunder, form into more than slow reverberation. Only the woman in white could glide onward, shimmering, through Errek’s embrace.
“Illusion, Drakkonwehr,” purred the mage’s voice in his ear. “How kind of you to fall for it.”
Powerless, he could do nothing but stare in horror as the knife, continuing its uninterrupted motion, slid smoothly into Errek’s tunic. It struck a spark from the chain mail covering his friend’s chest, a tiny spark that winked out even as the blade penetrated with agonizing leisure, penetrated to the hilt. A fine spray of red droplets punctuated the impact, hazing into the air.
“No!” he cried as Errek’s body, ever so slowly, rounded over the antler-handled hilt, now spotted with blood.
The big man staggered backward and his hand came up to his chest. “Durren—” Errek raised his head, a look of shock in his eyes. “Your knife—” And he crumpled, slowly, to the ground...
“No!”
The cry echoed off the trees like a hundred howls of pain. The horses below jerked up their heads and stamped. A pair of crows took squawking flight from a dead pine. The boy sat up, blinking like a startled field mouse.
“Sir? Are you—it’s early yet, isn’t it?”
The man stared down at the boy, concentrating, trying to bring him into focus, to return his vision to the place and time the boy’s voice called him toward. It’s not the words. The words are nothing. It’s his voice that drives out the demons and leaves me here. Quivering—yes—but here. Not...there.
He straightened slowly and pressed his tunic against his chest to blot the moisture there. “Yes, Gareth, it’s much too early,” he said gently. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
With hands barely poking out of over-long tunic sleeves, the boy knuckled his eyes and yawned. “I must have been dreaming, I guess,” he mumbled and lay down again. “Sorry, sir.”
The man watched him snuggle into the hard ground. Even from this distance, he could see dirt smudging the boy’s cheekbone and bits of twig and branch clinging to his sand-colored hair.
He sees nothing of the outside, not even his own. He belongs at Drakkonwehr...with me.
The man raised his hands and, turning them over, stared at the gloves covering them like a black second skin. Even here, even in this desolation, this wilderness, he wouldn’t take them off. Not in daylight. Nor in moonlight. Only in the deepest shadow of night where he himself could see nothing.
Raising his head, he turned his face northward while the breeze fluttered the edge of his hood. Drakkonwehr lay in that direction, in the shadow of peaks he could not now see but knew their location as a magnet knows true north even without ever reaching it. They would be safe there, he and the boy—if only they could keep moving.
It was just after noon when Mirianna woke the first time. She’d been dreaming of the lion. Its voice—and the words of warning spoken with that voice—had made her rise, disheveled and groggy, to check the fastening on her door. Satisfied it was secure, she’d lain down again.
Some time later, when the sun had begun to slant between cracks in the closed shutters, she awakened a second time. She lay for a few moments, watching dust particles float through the streaks of light. She felt warm and as spineless as a cat luxuriating on the thick mattress. When she stretched, her breasts tingled with the movement of her shift across them, and with the memory of her lover’s touch.
She sighed, filled with an ache to know the man whose sensual presence haunted her dreams. Nightly he visited her, sometimes more than once. Since the incident with Rees, her lover’s touch had become more erotic, more intimate, the aura around him darker, more shadowed. Closing her eyes, she wondered vaguely if Rees’s groping had propelled her past some barrier. Or if it had opened a wider crack in her unconscious mind, allowing visions to enter that had been otherwise kept at bay.
The idea disturbed her. To shake it off, she tried to return to the comfort of her lover’s arms, but the colors faded to blue and purple and filled with shadows, loud voices, and shapes that snatched at her from all sides in some sort of tunnel where she could run only one way—down deeper into darkness—before she fell and woke with a start.
Sitting up in bed, she saw by the shadow of the shutter slats that it was late afternoon. She rubbed her arms to chase away lingering chills, and heard the hum of voices below. She recognized her father’s immediately, but the second man wasn’t Rees or Pumble. The innkeeper, she guessed, and rose with a sigh. Although her father had retired for a nap the same time as she, the lure of gems had undoubtedly drawn him from his rest.
She grimaced at her reflection in the glass—sun-darkened forehead and nose, wind-dried lips, and light purple shadows under her eyes. Well, if her appearance left her less than comparable with the beauties of Ar-Deneth, all the better. Rees had set his charm to work on the serving maid who welcomed them, a woman of forty if she was a day, but as ready as he with a bawdy joke and leer. Mirianna had no doubt the woman would tumble into his bed as soon as he offered. Perhaps she had already. I hope so. The sooner he satisfies his urges, the better for me.
Downstairs, late afternoon sun cast a long rectangle of light through the open window and across a small oaken table. Her father sat there, the sun glinting off his newly scrubbed forehead. The innkeeper, a burly man in apron and shoved-up sleeves, straddled a chair to his right. He was leaning forward, pointing at a stone lying on a black cloth while droplets of perspiration decorated his balding head.
“There you are.” Mirianna crossed the room to lay her hands on her father’s shoulders. “Have you found anything you like?”
Tolbert glanced up, then refocused his glass on the stone between his fingertips. “Lovely color, but see that thin line there?” He held the glass and let Mirianna peer through it.
“A flaw?” She slid into the vacant seat to his right.
“It’ll shatter if I try to cut it.”
Ulerroth shrugged when Tolbert handed him the stone. He dropped it into a pile off to the side. “I have more.”
Tolbert pinched the bridge of his nose. He still looked tired, but Mirianna said nothing. Her father blew a speck of dust from his glass. “Actually, I was counting on you to have bloodstone. The Master of Nolar insists on having it.”
“Bloodstone!” Ulerroth’s expression brightened. “Why didn’t you say so?” He tugged a small pouch from beneath his apron. With one thick hand, he shoved the other gems to the side of the cloth, while the other hand threw the pouch into the center of it. “There,” he said, leaning back on two legs of his chair, “feast your eyes on the treasure of the Wehrland.”
With a glance at Ulerroth, then at Mirianna, Tolbert wiped his hands on his tunic and reached for the pouch. He unfastened the thong and carefully poured out its contents. Five small stones rolled out first—the smallest like a barley grain, the largest like a pea—and settled into a loose semi-circle. Into their center rolled a stone larger than all five together. Dull, nearly black, each was slightly oblong and wider at one end.
Mirianna leaned forward, almost bumping heads with her father as they peered at the stones. The gems could have passed for obsidian, but they were far too dull. Unpolished jet sprang to her lips, but the words went unsaid as the sunlight sinking into the stones revealed a growing rim of dark red around the edge of each. Her lips parted and she watched, speechless, while Tolbert picked up the stones one by one and gently placed them in the center of his palm. Almost instantly, the stones began to glow a deep, glossy blood-red. Like the first drops of a fresh kill, she thought, and shuddered. At once, spears of scarlet light broke in all directions, streaking her father’s palm, fingers, the table, their faces.
“Dragon’s blood!” Tolbert breathed.
Ulerroth snorted out a chuckle. “In the flesh, my friend.” He leaned forward, throwing his shadow over Tolbert’s hand. Like an oil lamp, blown out, darkens a room instantly, the stones, deprived of light, became nothing again—nothing but dull, blackish, droplet-shaped bits of rock.
Transfixed, Mirianna stared. She’d seen bloodstone before. Her father had made a piece or two from it when she was younger. She’d watched him polish the stone and shape the silver setting. She’d even touched it once, with her fingernail, when he wasn’t looking, but she’d never seen such a display of its power. He’d kept it inside then and worked under the light of his candle and lamp. The stone she remembered had lain inert, more black than red, and she’d wondered why anyone would choose such an ugly thing as an adornment.
“Well,” Ulerroth was saying, “will you be wanting these?”
“Oh, yes.” Tolbert placed them one by one on the table.
With some difficulty, Mirianna withdrew her gaze from the stones and turned it on her father. He sat with his hands spread on the table, thumbs pointing at each other and seemed to be staring at the stones. But it wasn’t just the stones he was seeing, she knew; it was the possible settings and arrangements. Each minute flutter of his eyelids or shift of the pupils told her another idea had been considered and either discarded or saved. While she watched, the furrows in his forehead deepened. Two vertical grooves, either side of his nose, lengthened and leaned toward each other.
“I can’t do it,” he said, straightening. “It’s not enough.”
Ulerroth’s expelled breath was like an explosion. “What do you mean?” He thrust out a huge hand. “That’s all the bloodstone I have.”
Tolbert shook his head. “It’s enough for a bracelet. And a pendant perhaps but...” He waggled his head again and slid his hands along the table’s edge. “The Master of Nolar was very insistent I use bloodstone in every piece. I have to have more.”
The innkeeper rolled his eyes. “Understand me, my friend, when I say there’s no more to be had. I’ve but one source for the gems and he was here yesterday. This was all he brought.”
Tolbert’s face brightened. “Yesterday? Well, then, perhaps I can persuade him to find me more.” He picked up the largest stone and rolled it between thumb and fingertips. “Two or three more this size would be just right.” He replaced the gem on the table and squinted at the sun-drenched window. “Where can I find him?”
Ulerroth grunted. He leaned forward and, with a thick index finger, deliberately repositioned all six stones. “You don’t know what you’re asking, my friend.”
Tolbert scratched his chin. “If it’s your fee you’re concerned about, I can see that you—”
The innkeeper slapped the tabletop, jumbling the stones. “Don’t be a fool, old man! This is no ordinary gem hunter.”
Mirianna eased her elbow from the table and rubbed where the jolted edge had bitten into it. The table’s vibrations echoed along her nerves the way Ulerroth’s outburst ec
hoed in the high-ceilinged room. The innkeeper was a substantial man, capable of knocking heads if the order of his establishment was disturbed. Yet sweat glistened on his forehead and she noticed his gaze wouldn’t settle, not even on the scattered stones.
“Well,” Tolbert said, clearing his throat as he removed his hands from the table, “this gem hunter will take gold, won’t he?”
Ulerroth wiped his face with his apron. He laughed, but the sound only made Mirianna shift in her chair. Something about his manner made her skin crawl. “Papa, perhaps we shouldn’t—”
“Listen to her.” Ulerroth leaned across the table. “Forget this gem hunter. He won’t let you find him anyway. He—” He hesitated, as if noting their startled expressions, and grinned—a quick, humorless show of teeth. “He doesn’t like people.”
“But I must have the bloodstone. These simply aren’t enough.” Tolbert looked from her to Ulerroth. “The Master of Nolar insists.”
The innkeeper shoved his chair back, thrust himself out of it and paced the mantel wall. “Look, I can’t help you. The Shadow Man—”
“The Shadow Man?” Mirianna breathed. The name sent a shiver of sensation down her arms. In her mind, an image wavered, an image of blackness...a tower of blackness. And a voice as deep as the night.
“The Shadow Man?” Tolbert’s eyes widened. “But I thought he was only a winter’s tale.”
“He is.” Ulerroth paused to lean against the fireplace and wipe his face once more. “Except for once a year when he comes here to trade with me.”
Chapter Nine
“But who—or what—is the Shadow Man?” Mirianna recovered enough to ask.
“No one knows.” Tolbert scratched his cheek. “A being like the shadow of a man, if I remember the story correctly.”
Mirianna swallowed. The memory of the faceless shape and voice enlarged, vivid in all of its darkness. “Go on,” she breathed, knowing with an odd, prickling certainty her vision and the being they spoke of were one and the same.
Ulerroth gripped his chair and placed it before the table again. “Black Mage spawn,” he said, sitting down heavily, “let loose, some say, when the last mage tried to raise the Dragon.”
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