The Faithful Traitor (Wizard & Dragon Book 2)

by Robert Don Hughes

  Paumer drifted into the kitchen, his long face still haggard. He barely greeted them, his eyes on Dark. He appeared to be wanting to ask the boy a question but needed to be encouraged to do so. Dark wouldn’t look at him. Jocelath found them next, coming straight to Elaryl and kneeling by her chair, apologizing profusely for oversleeping. Seagryn had never completely understood the relationship between them, but he had observed that Jocelath had a talent for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. She’d often been saucy when she needed to be deferential. Now she was being obsequious, to Elaryl’s embarrassment. “Oh, do get up, Jocelath,” he heard himself snap. “You’re getting your skirt wet.”

  “I am?” the maid said, hopping up and looking down. Indeed, the water spilled from the bamboo tubes had soaked her hem, and this brought a new apology to her mistress.

  “Would you sit down and eat?” Elaryl ordered, and her maid closed her mouth and obeyed.

  “So! We’re all here, then?” Sheth boomed as he marched into the kitchen from the great hall. Thaaliana followed him, looking as if she felt herself important. Behind them both came Fylynn, self-consciously clenching a dressing gown around her bulky form. She was regarding Thaaliana’s back in much the same way as the squirrel-woman had looked at Elaryl a few moments earlier. Seagryn was immediately reminded of some of the unpleasant interpersonal relationships in the Dragonforge. Evidently Sheth had the same thought, for he clapped Seagryn on the back and smiled broadly. “Just like old times, right?”

  “Some differences,” Seagryn replied, picking up a napkin to wipe his face.

  “Not many,” the other powershaper argued. “Oh, Thaaliana is new, and Fylynn. Dark’s little girlfriend is missing, but here’s this new young lady to keep him company.” Sheth gestured at Jocelath, who blushed. Dark never looked up from his plate. “So … shall we begin?”

  “You’re not hungry?” Fylynn asked him, obviously a little disturbed, if that was the case. She’d already sat down at the table and filled her plate.

  “Only to make magic!” Sheth announced dramatically, and left the room. Thaaliana followed him dutifully, and Seagryn chose not to meet Elaryl’s knowing glance.

  A moment later he finished his own breakfast and stood up. “I guess,” he murmured quietly, “that it’s time to start.” He joined Thaaliana and Sheth in the great hall.

  The two sat together at the head table, along which was arranged six sparkling objects. Seagryn moved quickly to look at them, but Sheth warned him just as quickly, “Don’t touch.”

  Seagryn took his place at the end of the table and examined the object closest to him. It was some kind of crystal carved into a tall, thin pyramid shape — three sided, exactly like its five neighbors. “What are they made of?”

  “Diamonds,” Sheth breathed, his own excitement evident.

  “A diamond? This size?”

  “Six diamonds this size. Incredible, aren’t they?”

  Seagryn nodded in agreement, his eyes lost in the depths of the gem.

  “Very well,” Sheth commanded. “Let’s begin.”

  “To do what, exactly?” Seagryn asked, earning himself a frown. It was obvious Sheth felt himself to be in charge here.

  “I’ll tell you,” Sheth answered, implying it would be in his own good time. Seagryn shrugged and waited. “When we’re finished, these six stones will fit together in a cluster — thus,” he said, miming with his hands how the six would be pulled together into one object. “A thorn of crystal, to stab into the dragon’s heart!”

  Amyryth’s words dashed across Seagryn’s mind — the revelation that this object was far more important than just a weapon to kill the dragon. But he remembered, too, her warning — that to tell Sheth the Power had inspired its making might frighten him away. Seagryn determined that he would be silent and follow Sheth’s lead. If the Power was in on the making of this thing, then certainly they would be told its purpose eventually.

  “Now,” Sheth murmured, some nervousness apparent in his voice. “To begin. Concentrate your shaper ability on this pyramid. Will yourself inside it! When we meet each other there — well. We’ll know then what to do next.” Sheth then clasped his hands before him, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Thaaliana looked at Seagryn, shrugged, and did the same. Seagryn looked at the crystal and imagined himself within it, then closed his own eyes and shaped.

  This was shaping, not miracle-working. That was certain, for he felt himself folly in control and experienced a kind of haughty authority over the powers that his mind molded. They bowed to his will, yielding before him, as he moved his spirit forward against the crystalline substance. It felt as if he were flattening his nose against the pyramid’s cool edge and trying to push on through it. The resistance was great — the stone was hard! And yet, in a moment, his nose pushed through, then his face, and he gazed rapturously upon an empty place filled with a pale-blue mist. He glanced down at himself, but he wasn’t there — it was as if his whole body were one triangular plane of this gigantic pyramidal form. He might have panicked, then, had not his shock at the sight caused him to jerk: his hand forward, through the plane and into the pyramid. He was not yet fully inside. He plunged a foot forward and his leg came through — then his other arm, and finally his other leg. Then he was falling, and would have felt terrified had not his fall been slow and graceful, more like the flight of a snowflake than a raindrop. His feet touched the floor of this glassy world, and he paused there, looking about. There was nothing but a light-blue fog any way he turned. He started forward, calling, “Sheth? Thaaliana? Sheth! Thaaliana!”

  It seemed he wandered there for some time before he heard Sheth calling back to him and walked toward the sound. Sheth’s face suddenly loomed from the mist, wild with excitement and relief, and they embraced one another as old friends and began calling to Thaaliana in chorus.

  “Quiet,” Sheth said suddenly, and they both hushed. Then they heard her, crying out desperately for either one of them to find her. They shouted her name in unison, and out of the fog Thaaliana came running, her eyes wide with terror and her arms outstretched. She leaped onto both of them, hugging both necks at once, and they all squealed with the joy of three children suddenly reunited after being lost in the woods at night.

  “Now what?” Seagryn asked Sheth, although he intuitively knew the answer already.

  “Now we say together, ‘Three shapers, three sides, and power in each.”’

  Thaaliana and Seagryn repeated the chant with him. “Three shapers, three sides, and power in each!”

  “And now?” Thaaliana asked, a little breathlessly.

  “We go back — the way we came.”

  “I don’t know which way I came,” she murmured.

  “I’m turned around, too,” Seagryn said.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Sheth told them. “Let’s just all take a direction and go.” He turned around then and started off. Thaaliana and Seagryn glanced at each other, establishing their own directions, and plunged back into the fog.

  At length Seagryn bumped against the slanting plane again, but he realized it was not the crystal he touched now, but the air. Leaving the crystal was easy — like popping one’s head above water. As soon as he did so, his eyes flew open, and he saw that he sat at the table with the other two shapers — but in a different seat.

  There was a sudden explosion of celebration around him, as Fylynn — who had been standing behind his chair — rushed to embrace Sheth, and Elaryl dodged around her to grab Seagryn and smother him with kisses of relief. It was with some consternation that he realized the sky beyond the great hall’s windows had turned black …

  “All day!” Elaryl was crying. “You’ve been gone all day long!”

  “We have?”

  “All three of you!” Fylynn said, whooping in joy that Sheth had returned to her. Seagryn glanced around the room. Dark leaned against a glistening column, smiling warmly. Jocelath rushed around doing something. He didn’t see Paumer.

&
nbsp; Then he glanced down at Sheth, whose smile of shared triumph was as genuine as any Seagryn remembered. They were comrades, now, in a new way — along with Thaaliana, of course, who sat in her new chair, amazed and elated, her eyes wide with excitement. Suddenly they filled with alarm. “My children!”

  Elaryl nodded at her, understanding her concern. “Your husband has been calling for you ever since sundown — wandering around in the woods down below. I was going to go down and tell him but Paumer told me not to — said he didn’t know about you.”

  “I haven’t told him,” Thaaliana said quickly, her guilty eyes focused down on the tabletop. “Maybe I’ll have to now —” Before any of them could reply, a squirrel jumped down from the chair to the floor and skittered out of the great hall toward one of the four tree towers. With a flash of her tail, she was gone.

  “Tomorrow, remember!” Sheth called after her, then he slumped back in his chair and looked at Seagryn. “I’m exhausted!” He sighed.

  “Me, too,” Seagryn replied, rolling his head back as Elaryl massaged his shoulders. He felt exactly as if he’d stooped over a table all day long —

  “You all disappeared at the same instant, and we’ve been watching and waiting ever since,” Fylynn explained. “Then just a few minutes ago you suddenly were back — but in different chairs!”

  “Where have you been?” Elaryl leaned over Seagryn and demanded. “The thing on the table kept glowing, and we wondered if you were inside —”

  “We were.” Seagryn nodded, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “We tried to look into it, but couldn’t see you,” she mumbled.

  “Are you hungry?” Jocelath asked, serving full plates to each of them.

  “Hungry?” Seagryn frowned. “I just finished breakfast!”

  He did, however, have an appetite. And once his head hit the pillow in their room in the tower, he couldn’t remember another thing.

  Thaaliana did not come the next day. That was just as well, for Seagryn and Sheth both slept past noon. When they finally did get up, they sat together beside the one pyramid that now glowed, and looked wearily at the five others that still sat lifeless. They decided that they would attempt to fill another stone every other day and took the rest of the day off.

  The next morning Thaaliana rejoined them, but, from the tension on her face, she’d obviously had less rest than they. “I’m a mother, too — remember?” she’d snapped when Sheth commented on it. But they moved much faster on the second pyramid, for they all knew now what to expect. They were out by late afternoon — time enough for Thaaliana to get home to her children and mother-in-law before March quit chopping, and time enough for Seagryn to enjoy sunset from the top of the tree tower he shared with his lady.

  *

  By the time it finally was finished, the six pyramids all glowed with a blue radiance that never varied. “Tomorrow,” Sheth breathed quietly when they came out for the sixth and last time, “we make them all into one.”

  That night Seagryn had difficulty sleeping. He rose before Elaryl and donned a heavy coat to go pace the open balconies of the tree-castle’s second level. The days of pyramid filling had been fun — far different from the making of the dragon. He felt bonded to Sheth in a new way, and to Thaaliana, too — although he didn’t speak of that to Elaryl. The two women had still found no common ground between them, and he thought he knew why — Elaryl envied Thaaliana her power, while Thaaliana envied Elaryl’s relationship to Seagryn, and his to her. Knowing March, Seagryn could understand why.

  But that wasn’t the problem that caused him to pace this morning. He contemplated the larger concern of the finished object’s real purpose. He had no doubt that Amyryth had told him the truth. She had a prophet for a son; but more than that, she had her own spiritual wisdom born from years of experience — wisdom surpassing that of most of the Elders of Lamath. But when would the Power reveal that purpose? And what would be Sheth’s response?

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Thaaliana had sent her husband off early this morning, and Sheth was already in the great hall when Seagryn finally clumped in off the wooden portico.

  “You’re here,” the older wizard said crisply. “Good.” He was holding two pyramids, which he passed to Thaaliana with the instructions, “You hold these two.” Then he picked up two more and held them out to Seagryn. “You take these.” Seagryn crossed the room quickly to do so as Sheth picked up the last two. “Now — into a triangle,” he said, nodding to indicate where each of them was to stand, well away from the table. Then he held out his pair before him, and they did the same, bringing the six stones together into the cluster he’d demonstrated to them that first morning. “And now, we all say together, ‘And thus let the six be one.’ ”

  Just as Seagryn had known intuitively on that first morning what words needed to be said, he knew now. And this phrase was incomplete. He glanced at Thaaliana to see if she knew, too. No. Perhaps he was wrong. He shrugged off the thought and repeated the phrase with the others. “And thus let the six be one.” Nothing happened.

  They tried again. Still nothing. The six fragments did not meld … Six fragments! Seagryn thought to himself, and his head reeled slightly. He understood, now, what these crystals represented, and what melding them together into one would symbolize, and a chill ran up his spine as he remembered how all these events had come to pass. The Conspiracy — sworn to reunite the old One Land but hated by people in each of the Fragments — had moved inexorably upon the course that the Power had set before it. Not directly, perhaps — Seagryn doubted if the dragon had been in the Power’s purpose. But who could know? And what did it matter? This had been the purpose of the Conspiracy all along — to make this gem cluster, not as a weapon to be plunged into a dim-witted dragon’s heart, but to reunite the unbalanced Fragments of the old One Land into a single, balanced whole. But something was still missing. Seagryn knew what it was.

  “Try again!” Sheth growled, and once again they repeated the formula he’d prescribed. Nothing. The older wizard cursed in frustration.

  “Maybe we’re not doing it right,” Thaaliana suggested.

  “We are!” Sheth snarled at her. “Try it again!” he yelled as he thrust his pyramids out before him so violently they clacked together with Seagryn’s.

  “Yes,” Seagryn said calmly. “Let’s do try again.” Once more they repeated the phrase, only this time Seagryn enlarged on it. “By faith I plead that the six be one,” he began. Sparks shot from their hands before he could finish, “If such be the will of the Power!”

  Sheth screamed. Thaaliana did, too, and both let go of the melded object to save their burning fingertips from any more pain. Seagryn was left holding the crystal gem, but to him it felt strangely cool. He had to grab under it quickly to support its weight. As he clutched it to him, there came from it such a sweet, compelling aura of acceptance that he nearly swooned away. He barely heard Sheth’s stream of invective, cursing him to every kind of misery for having brought the Power into the gem’s making. Soon he couldn’t hear Sheth at all. A low, powerful note sounded through the room, vibrating the flooring of the tree-castle and terrifying all but Seagryn. Lyrical higher tones followed, and the music swelled around them, sustaining the bass notes while filling the scale above. At last the sound crescendoed with a crashing blast, and the blue mist they’d found inside the pyramids suddenly enveloped the tree-castle. It was no longer a fall day in the lower Marwilds. Neither was it night. Instead, all of them — the three wizards and those who’d raced in fear to join them in the great hall — hung suspended somewhere in a mist of cool, loving blue, as One they Could Not Name formed meaning in all of their minds at once. And while they later debated the precise words used to express the ideas, the sense of the message came clear to all of them — crystal clear.

  The gem cluster Sheth thought he’d designed was a gateway back to the Power for those powers who had long ago abandoned that One’s presence. Once successfully opened, it would b
ind the One Land together again, because the powers that now divided the Fragments from one another would be once again united. It was not a tool of destruction. It was not to be used as a weapon. Most important of all — it was not yet finished. There was a high place located where faith and magic met, where the powers now were clustered and where the gate should be completed. The Marwandian raiders who’d found the jewels and transported them had poured their lifeblood into it. The jewel cutters of the south had blessed it with their expertise. Now the wizards had invested it with the power to shape. But until believers poured faith into it, the Power’s gateway would not be perfected. Once that was done, the gate could be opened — an act that would require the highest cost of all.

  Sheth argued with the message, and all of them heard him, not with their ears but with their spirits. “But it’s my design! I made it! How can you tell me what to use it for, when I’m the one who made it!”

  They all said later that each of them knew the answer before it came. The One Beyond their Hearing had first made Sheth. By his own logic, how could Sheth argue with his own designer?

  Still Sheth debated. “I made the crystal thorn for a specific purpose! I know it will kill the dragon!”

  Certainly the dragon would be killed, the answer rolled back within all of them at once. The dragon had been shaped by powers — it was a magical beast. When the powers all returned then all magic would cease, and the dragon would no longer live.

  “All magic?” Sheth pleaded with the mist. “My powers, too? My shaper ability?”

  The answer was clear. In the aftermath of the powers’ passing, there would be no powers to shape — only faith to express.

  “But I have no faith!” Sheth railed at the bright blue cloud, and again they each heard the answer in words they could understand.

  That is a choice, not a given. Faith could be expressed by anyone, just as everyone was to some degree a powershaper. But by its very nature, faith required the wizard to sacrifice independence, to become no longer the shaper, but the shaped.