When she looked back at the Commander, he was watching her closely, waiting patiently for her to say something. “Angus found something,” she said at last. “I cannot tell you what it is—I will not tell you what it is. But I can tell you this much: it is potentially far more dangerous than the fishmen.”
Commander Garret’s eyes widened at her proclamation, but he said nothing for several seconds. When he spoke, his voice was strained and did not carry far beyond her ears. “I know of your reputation, Embril,” he said. “I know you would not say such a thing lightly. I also know what the fishmen are capable of doing. It is difficult for me to reconcile the two. Help me to do so.”
She frowned again. What could she tell him that wouldn’t tell him too much? She nodded slowly and asked, “Do you know much of the history of this region, about the Dwarf Wars?”
“More than most,” Commander Garret said. “I believe it is important for the Commander of a garrison to know as much as possible about those things that may impact his decisions. The history of the conflicts in an area is one of those things. The dwarves have very long lives and even longer memories.”
“Good,” she said. “Then you know how they ended, how the volcanism drove the Dwarves away.”
“Some say they caused it,” Commander Garret said.
A sad smile fell upon her face as she shook her head and said, her voice almost a whisper, “They didn’t.”
He waited for her to say more, but before she could—if she was going to at all—there was a tap on the door and Lieutenant Jarhad called out, “Commander?”
Commander Garret stared at Embril for a long moment before he set his palms on the table and pushed himself upward. He lingered for a few more seconds, and then shook his head and moved quickly to the door. He unlocked and opened it.
Lieutenant Jarhad had a variety of caps, hats, and other headgear in his arms, and Commander Garret stepped aside to let him enter.
Commander Garret smiled as he joined them at the table and said, “Let’s see which one looks best, shall we? Then we’ll see about a uniform.”
Separation Anxiety
1
Hobart looked toward the setting sun and shook his head. It had been two days since Giorge had walked into that tomb and it had disappeared, and there was still no sign of Angus. Ortis had kept watch from the lift every day, but there was nothing, not even a whisper of thunder or a glint of Lamplight. He and another Ortis had climbed as high as they dared up the mountainside on which Giorge had disappeared, and even from that vantage point they had seen nothing, not even a small patch of blackness on the white, glacial landscape below them. Then they had spent a day and a half climbing down the mountain and up the next one without anything to show for it but aching muscles and hungry bellies.
“We have to go back,” Ortis said as he sat down beside Hobart. “If we go any further, we’ll run out of supplies on the way back to Dagremon’s, and you saw how sparse that plateau was. Even if we left now, the grain for the horses will likely run out before we make it across.”
Hobart nodded without turning. What Ortis said was reasonable, but a part of him, the part that had duty drilled into him over and over again in his training, the part of him that never let a comrade down, was pulling him further and further away from the lift. He set his jaw, straightened his back, and said nothing.
“You know we aren’t going to find him,” Ortis said, his voice soft. “That thing carried him away.”
Hobart nodded again. He had seen that thing ripping Angus apart like a hungry soldier rending off a chunk of day-old bread, and then it had carried him away. There was no telling how far it had taken him, but that didn’t matter to Hobart. “He’s a part of the banner,” he said, his tone resolute. “We owe it to him.”
Ortis shook his head. “Not to our own peril,” he said. “You know he wouldn’t want that. It would be different if we knew he was out here somewhere. We don’t. That thing could have carried him anywhere. Or worse.”
Hobart’s jaw muscles tightened and his eyes narrowed as he fixed his stare on the pink and purple sunset. Under other circumstances, its beauty would have gladdened him, but not this time; this time, it was the torch igniting the flame of Angus’s funeral pyre. “You heard the thunder,” Hobart said, his tone defensive, decisive. “He used the wand.”
“Yes,” Ortis agreed. “But to what effect? You saw how my arrows passed through that thing as if it wasn’t there, and your sword sliced through it as if it were made of air. Don’t you think that wand would have done the same thing?”
Hobart frowned and shook his head. “You know that spell he has that makes the breeze? It blew that thing away from us, remember? The wand is a lot more potent than that spell.”
Ortis shrugged but said nothing. What more could he say, anyway? Hobart wondered. Ortis was right, and Hobart knew he was right. But he wasn’t ready to admit it. Instead, he stared at the sunset and let the thin, chill mountain air ruffle his cloak. He had failed, and there was nothing he could do about it, no body to take back to bury. At least he knew Giorge had met his end, the one meant for him, and that gave him some sense of closure, but Angus? Where was he? Was he alive? He clenched his fists in frustration and anger. Was Angus being tormented by that thing? Was it ripping him to shreds even as they sat watching the darkness creep in around them? Was he already dead?
Hobart sighed, the kind of sigh that made his whole body sag as if it were under a great strain, and looked down at the broadsword laying across his knees. He eased the tension in his fingers and said, his voice grim and decisive, “All right, Ortis. We’ll start back in the morning.”
They sat in silence until the darkness had consumed them, and then Ortis pointed at the black silhouette of the mountain southwest of them. “We can cross back on that side of the valley,” he suggested. “We might be able to see something from that vantage point that we couldn’t see from this side.”
Hobart, his head still bowed, nodded and pulled his cloak in around him. He leaned forward and closed his eyes, thinking about how foolish he had been since Giorge had died. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have brought the tent, more provisions, torches.… But their gear was with Ortis and the horses back in the cave because he had made a mistake no soldier should make: he had let grief overwhelm his judgment before the task was done.
He shook his head and shivered. A lot of good a tent did in a cave, he thought as he began to doze.
2
Angus reached up and pressed his fingers against the ice shaft. The surface was fairly smooth, and a thin, fresh layer of ice had formed on it. It was as slick as could be, and there was no way he could climb up it in his condition. As he considered what to do, water formed beneath his fingers as the ice began to melt. He pressed his palm firmly against the ice and waited.
Seconds passed before a tiny streamlet trickled down to the shelf below him. Minutes passed before the indentation was deep enough for his hand or toes to fit into it. He removed his hand and reached up a little higher and to the left. He pressed against the icy wall and waited. Minutes went by before he was satisfied the impression was deep enough. Then he reached lower, near the bottom of the shaft, to make a toehold. It would be very slow going, and there was no telling if he would have the strength and patience to make it all the way to the surface, but what choice did he have? He couldn’t climb like Giorge even with both arms and legs working properly; that had been Typhus influencing him. He was sure of it.
A half-remembered image popped into his head as he thought about how easy it would be for Typhus to climb up the convoluted shaft. Typhus had been thinking something when Angus woke up in the cave after his battle with the frost elemental. He had been groggy, and Typhus had taken control of his body and was thinking about how he could kill Ortis and Hobart and then escape by climbing along the walls of the cave. There was something… It wasn’t in words; it had been a rapid flash of memory, of habit. What was it? Something about his breeches? Yes,
Typhus’s breeches were unusual. They were special. They were made from…what? Silk? He had gone somewhere to buy silk harvested from the webs of enchanted spiders. Yes, that was it; he used his breeches to help him climb.
No, Angus thought, his eyes growing wide. He didn’t use them to help him climb; he used them to climb. The silk clung to surfaces like a spider clings to a wall! All he had to do was think about climbing, and up he went! Angus closed his eyes and bowed his head, trying to bring the memory into sharper focus, to see if there was something he had to do to make the breeches work. What was it?
By the time he abandoned the effort, his hand was nearly three inches deep in the icy wall, and he quickly brought it out. There was only one thing he needed to do to make the breeches work: hike up his robe. As long as the breeches maintained contact with the wall, they would cling to it and he could climbing with the effortless ease of spider. But they had to be in direct contact with the surface; they wouldn’t work if they weren’t.
He frowned. He couldn’t take off his robe; he needed its magic to keep from freezing and its belt to stabilize his arm. He would have to rearrange the robe so the breeches could touch the ice. After several minutes’ effort and much pain, he had the hem draped over his left shoulder and tucked into his belt. Then he sat down and leaned back for some rest. He was too exhausted to climb up the shaft. At least the bunched up robe gave his neck some support, and he was able to touch the wound in the small of his back. It seemed superficial enough, and with luck, it would heal on its own, but if it got infected…
Before falling asleep, he tried once more to bring the magic into focus. This time, nothing happened.
3
Typhus barely stirred as he woke up, and his breathing hardly changed from the slow, methodical rhythm of rest. His head sagged forward, pulling uncomfortably against the back of his neck, and a tightness tugged at his shoulders. The sharp edge of metal bit into his wrists and ankles, holding his arms and legs wide apart. The balls of his feet barely touched the cold stone floor—a smooth, clean floor—and he shifted slightly, taking nearly a minute to move scarcely two inches to the left to put his weight more fully on his legs to ease the strain from his arms.
He was naked.
His tools were gone. All of his tools, even the one imbedded under the skin at his hairline.
The manacles were tight on his wrists, but not so tight that they cut off circulation. He wasn’t dangling from them, either, even though they prevented him from moving more than a few inches in any direction. It was as if whoever had him didn’t want to cause him any unnecessary pain—for now. What would happen later? What would they do when they discovered he was awake?
They? Who had him?
He focused on his breathing, letting the steady rhythm of his expanding and contracting chest fill his senses and clear his mind. He had been captured before, been manacled before, and had even been hung up like an animal to be butchered a few times, and it did no good to panic. But those times, he had always had something he could use to pick a lock or kill his captor. This time…
He had been running. Why? He frowned as an image of his father’s tower came abruptly to his mind, filling him with dread and fear. What would possess him to go back there?
Argyle. His men had been chasing after him. He had taken some coins, but—
No, Argyle didn’t care about the coins. It was the key he wanted back. He had said so when Sardach—
His breathing quickened despite his efforts to still it, and he half-opened his eyes. Darkness enveloped him in its comforting touch, a deep darkness that penetrated everything and left behind a blank wall. He could see nothing, not even the slightest difference in the shades of gray around him; all of it was the uniform blackness that only happened underground or in a completely sealed room.
I’m in Argyle’s dungeon, he thought as he listened intently for any hint, any whisper of movement around him. The muffled jingle of the manacles, the heartbeat thrumming softly in his ears, the faint whistling of his breath—these were the only sounds, and he risked lifting his head to look around.
Darkness and more darkness.
He strained against his manacles for nearly a minute before deciding they were too secure to be pulled from the wall, too strong to snap. He tried to twist his hands from them, but they were too tight, even after he dislocated his thumbs. Had they been welded into place? He shook his head slightly; there were no burns on his wrists, and if they had been welded into place there would be. They even seemed to tighten as he struggled against them, and he wondered if they might be touched by magic. He frowned; they had thought of everything this time. Maybe if he could see it might help? There could be something within reach he might be able to use. He doubted it, though. He was in one of Argyles little playrooms, and the only things in them were the manacles and chains—except when Argyle or his cronies came by for a visit. Perhaps then?
Typhus sighed. If he were still with Angus, he’d be able to see magic and cast the Lamplight spell. He had watched Angus do it more than enough to be able to tie the knot himself, but until he had been joined with Angus, he had not been able to see magic. Voltari had been so utterly disappointed that he couldn’t teach him how to cast spells that he had sent him and his mother away. Even after his mother had died, Voltari would have nothing to do with him, and that had suited him fine; he had wanted nothing more to do with Voltari, either. He had survived well enough on his own without Voltari’s help—until Argyle had sent everyone after him. Even then, even with his life in the balance, it had been difficult for him to ask Voltari for help. It had been even more of a surprise when Voltari had agreed to help him. Had his father felt a fragment of guilt for abandoning them?
A harsh, low snort escaped from him, and his eyes grew wide as he listened intently to see if anyone had heard. After a minute, he relaxed again, as much as he dared to relax in light of the situation. It hadn’t been guilt that drove Voltari to help him; his father wasn’t plagued by a conscience any more than he was. It was one of the few things they had in common. Nor was it love, for Voltari had none of that, either. Duty? No; Voltari had abandoned that when he sent them away. In the end, it must have been curiosity that had convinced him to do it—or the challenge of devising a spell that would thwart his pursuers. Yes, that must have been it. There had been no compassion in Voltari’s eyes when he had blended his essence with Angus’s and then buried him so deep in the folds of Angus’s memory that no one could find him—until Fanzool had sought him out and his magic had touched him. Even then, it was Sardach, not Fanzool, who had drawn him to the surface, and then Typhus had seen as Angus saw, had felt as Angus felt.
He shifted slightly and flexed his toes to ease a cramp that was forming in his left leg. It was a barely noticeable, methodical series of slight movements that were just enough to cause his calf and thigh to quiver, and he did it without conscious thought.
What does Angus do when he seeks out the magic? Typhus thought, closing his eyes and visualizing the process. The first time Angus had done it, it had nearly overwhelmed him. The colors were so vibrant, so fresh, so new. The blues and reds and greens and browns were so unlike the shades of gray that followed him around wherever he went. He had known the words for the colors and had even tied them to the different shades of gray he could see—at least in broad strokes; the nuances had left him completely bewildered—but he had never realized how lively and vibrant they were. Or was it just the magic that made them seem so lively?
Look inward first, Typhus thought, reaching for the magic within him and expecting it to be as futile as it had been before he had been joined with Angus. But this time, the magic flared to life as brilliant and chaotic as it had been when Angus had done it that first time. He could see it! There was magic within him, and he could see it! What’s more, there were pathways in the magic that he recognized, pathways that were tied to the spells Angus had primed for, the spells they had primed for. Could he cast them?
He quick
ly reached out to the magic around him, and shrunk from the kaleidoscopic landscape of whirling colors. He knew this was normal—he had seen it often enough while he was merged with Angus—but he didn’t have the discipline, the experience, the knowledge that Angus had, and he couldn’t temper its impact. He winced, shut his eyes tight, and it burned through his eyelids as his mind continued to draw the magic toward him. Then, as if on their own, the strands retreated to the edge of his vision and dimmed considerably. He blinked away the afterimage and shuddered. Yes, that was what Angus had done, wasn’t it? He pushed them away and focused on the ones he wanted. Then he would reach out with his mind to draw in only those few strands he needed for his spells. He smiled as he studied the pulsing little streams of color. After a few seconds, he reached out for a red one that was so different from the gray shade he called red….
The thread came toward him as it had done for Angus, and he guided it to his right hand. He had a little play in the chains, but it still took a long time for him to bring the strand close enough to grasp it between his finger and thumb. It was warm, much warmer than he remembered from his experience with Angus, and it vibrated against his skin like a settling bowstring after a killing shot. He reached for the magic within him that was primed for Lamplight and slowly, carefully, clumsily tied the simple knot together. An orb of light burst to life on his palm, and he turned from the sudden, intense glare. Still looking away, he slowly opened his eyes and let them adjust to the sudden brightness in the room.
It was one of the rooms Argyle used to entertain his guests. The huge stone door stretched upward nearly fifteen feet to the ceiling, and Typhus frowned. It should have been exactly fifteen feet, but the builder had been a few inches short. Argyle must have been unhappy about that; he needed fifteen feet of clearance to avoid banging his head on the ceiling. The door was closed, and he knew its seal was so tight that it would muffle the loudest scream to a bare whisper in the corridor beyond.
The Golden Key (Book 3) Page 4