The Spellstone of Shaltus

by Linda E. Bushyager

  “What happened?” Her words were half-sob, half-whisper.

  “We don’t know. He was fine until a week and a half ago. He went to bed, apparently normal, but the next morning his servents found him unconscious on the floor. Since then his condition has degenerated. Tomaad has not helped, and our healers have found neither cause or cure. He’s in a coma now. I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe there is something I can do.”

  As Leah pulled out her spellstone and began to kneel at Trask’s side, Geraed grabbed her arm and pulled her upright.

  “You will not use your human magic on our chief.”

  Although the priest was about average height for a Sylvan, he was still more than thirty centimeters taller than Leah. As he towered over her, his mere physical presence was as intimidating as the tone of his voice. “But maybe my sorcery could do something to help him,” she protested weakly.

  “No. It is for Shuull to aid him.” His voice was as unyielding as his hand, which yanked her around to face the door.

  Then the door opened and a tall Sylvan entered. His handsome face was totally masked by a rather savage-looking design of paint. It was difficult to read the expression on his face, but his mismatched eyes of gray and brown looked warmly at Leah. It was Quinen.

  Leah was glad to see him, but the paint he wore dismayed her. It identified him as the chief of the tribe. Evidently the Sylvan thought Trask’s death was inevitable.

  Normally Quinen wore paint only on his right cheek to represent his position as the head communicator of the Ayers tribe. The communicators were telepathy with fantastic range. They linked the isolated skytree forests. Now his left cheek was painted to show that he had taken over Trask’s duties as the master tree-shaper, and designs on his forehead and nose indicated his position as chief of the tribe.

  “You were to wait in your room until I sent for you,” said Quinen, interrupting Leah’s thoughts.

  “I wanted to see my grandfather. I’ve told Geraed that I may be able to help him, using my spellstone, but he objected. Surely it couldn’t hurt to try.”

  The priest frowned. “If Shuull’s power could not aid him, there is nothing your human magic could do.”

  Quinen nodded. “Geraed has done his best, but I’m afraid there is nothing more to be done. I’m sorry, Leandes.”

  “But human magic is different from Sylvan power,” Leah objected. “It is as if one were rain and the other snow; though they are both of the same substance, they have different properties. Perhaps there is something I can accomplish that Sylvan cannot.”

  Geraed objected, “That is sacrilege. Shuull’s powers are far greater than human magic.”

  “But if there is nothing more that you can do, what harm would there be for me to try?”

  The Sylvan priest shook his head doubtfully. He walked over to Trask and studied the chief’s emaciated face. Geraed’s expression became grave.

  He turned back toward Leah. “He is dying, and there is nothing I can do. All right. It cannot hurt for you to try.”

  Now it was Quinen’s turn to look angry. “But it is human magic. Surely we cannot entrust Trask’s life to it.”

  Geraed studied Quinen’s irate expression thoughtfully. “I would have thought that you would be willing to try anything to save your foster-father.”

  “Anything but human magic—a minute ago you were against it too.”

  “Until I realized that Trask is truly dying.” “But not human magic—it is dangerous, evil … The priest was looking at Quinen suspiciously. “Do you suspect Leandes’s motives? She may be only a shiffem, but she is of Trask’s blood, and I do not believe she would do anything to endanger his life.”

  “Of course not, but …”

  Geraed’s voice took on a note of sarcasm. “And naturally you would not want to overlook any chance of aiding Trask. After all, if he were to die, you would be the one forced to assume his responsibilities. I know how reluctant you are to become chief …” Beneath his mask of paint Quinen’s face turned a shade redder.

  “Naturally we must do all we can to aid Trask. All right, if you are certain there is nothing more you can do, we’ll let Leandes try her magic. But I do not think it will do any good.”

  Leah sighed with relief. She didn’t know if she would be able to accomplish anything, but she had to try. While she was not one of the sorcerers especially gifted in the healing arts, she had been given basic training in that area. So she hoped she would be able to determine at least the cause of Trask’s mysterious illness, if not to effect an immediate cure.

  Once again she knelt at Trask’s side. She removed her powerstone from around her neck, placed the crystal over Trask’s heart, and concentrated on it while she recited a spell. Gradually she entered a trancelike state. As she probed Trask’s body psychically, she seemed to see alternating images on the back of her closed eyelids—first his skeleton, then his organs, the circulatory and nervous systems, and the muscular tissue.

  She stretched her arms out and passed her hands over his body from head to toe and back. She began to sense the wrongness. There were several disturbances—small stones in one of the kidneys, a twisted bone in his right arm from a childhood fall, scar tissue along his chest and on the side of one lung from old wounds. But these were minor compared to the wrongness that seemed to be everywhere.

  Poison.

  She did not have the skill or the training to determine what kind it was, and it had spread too far to destroy with sorcery. She did the only thing she could —she channeled energy into the frail body and prayed that it would give the old chief enough strength to fight off the venom on his own.

  Then she broke the rapport.

  “Well?” said the priest.

  She swung around and surveyed the two men critically. Could either of them have been involved? “Trask has been poisoned,” she said.

  “What?” Quinen’s surprise seemed genuine.

  Geraed’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.

  “Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do to determine the kind of poison. I’ve transferred energy to Trask, but I don’t know if it will do any good.”

  The priest gazed down at Trask. “He looks somewhat better. There’s more color in his cheeks, and his breathing is more regular.”

  “It may be that I did help him, but the effects could be only temporary.”

  Quinen frowned. His mask of paint seemed to twist his lips into a grimace. “I’ll send for some guards. If someone has tried to poison Trask, they could try again.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said the priest. “That’s why I’ve had my men stationed outside the door. I suspected this.”

  “What?” Quinen glared at the Shuull priest. “You suspected that Trask was poisoned and didn’t tell anyone?”

  “I didn’t know whom I could trust.”

  “Are you implying that I’m involved?”

  Geraed said nothing, and his silence was an answer.

  “What about you? How do we know you didn’t arrange this? You were the last one to see Trask that night, if you’ll remember. And you and your healers haven’t done a thing to help Trask.”

  Geraed smiled without humor. “That’s really a rather amusing theory. You also saw him that night. And who has the most to gain by our chiefs death? You’ve never agreed with Trask’s policy toward humans. You’re the one who’s tried to oust him as chief. You had enough support to be made second in command, but Trask was in too strong a position to be removed by anything except illness … or death.”

  Quinen’s indignation was plain. “That’s ridiculous. Trask’s been like a father to me, you know that. Even if we didn’t agree on things, even if I did want to become chief, I couldn’t hurt him.”

  Leah wondered if Quinen was sincere; he certainly seemed to be. She’d always liked him, and she wanted to believe him. Yet she knew that in recent years his hatred of humans had put him in direct opposition to Trask’s pacifist views. The two had grown far apart.
But it didn’t seem possible that Quinen would have attempted to murder Trask.

  “I certainly have no reason to poison Trask,” Geraed retorted.

  “These accusations aren’t getting us anywhere,” interjected Leah. “You two aren’t the only ones who had the opportunity to poison my grandfather, and there are others who might have reason. Maybe this has something to do with the Shaltuswraith…

  “Shaltus? Why would he bother us?” asked Quinen. “And how could he do anything at this range?”

  “I don’t know, but he was able to plant a programmed spellstone at Carlton,” replied Leah.

  She told them what happened at the castle.

  “Your brother thinks the Sylvan have joined Shaltus?” said Geraed in a shocked voice when she had finished. “A human-wraith is no friend of ours.”

  “Then how did that spellstone get into a skytree plant that I’d gotten from Trask?”

  Quinen’s mismatched eyes looked thoughtful. “Perhaps some human planted it there after you’d reached the castle. Who better to blame than a shiffem?”

  “But no human could have poisoned my grandfather, and it seems far too much of a coincidence for this to have happened at this time. Perhaps Shaltus knows something of the enmity between humans and Sylvan. Maybe he knows that if Trask dies Quinen will become the chief and that there would probably be a war between the Sylvan and Carlton—and that would be to Shaltus’s advantage.”

  “Aren’t you giving Shaltus a bit too much credit?” replied Quinen. “How could he know what we are doing? We’re talking about Shaltus as though he were still alive. But ‘he’ is really an it, a wraith, and a wraith has certain limitations, including nonmobility.”

  Leah nodded. “But if he—it—has a Sylvan under control …”

  “Don’t you think we’d be able to sense that?” asked the priest.

  “Perhaps not. Sylvans cannot usually detect human sorcery, and the wraith was human once. We really don’t know much about a wraith’s abilities anyway. And I’m not overlooking the possibility that some Sylvan could be involved willingly.” Leah studied the two men.

  Quinen’s painted face was unreadable. “But no Sylvan would willingly ally himself with a human wraith.” He turned toward Geraed. “We are overlooking an important aspect of what Leandes has told us.

  Richard S’Carlton believes that our tribe is allied with Shaltus. Even though it is not true, if he thinks it is, he might decide to declare war against us. I think the important thing to do right now is to make some preparations for defense.”

  “We can send a message to S’Carlton and try to convince him that the Sylvan are not involved,” said Geraed. “We’d better convene the tribal council and decide what’s to be done. We also have to decide what to do about Leandes. She may be Trask’s granddaughter, but she is still a shiffem, and she cannot become part of the tribe. Perhaps if we send her back to S’Carlton, it will show our goodwill… .”

  Before Leah could protest, Quinen put his hand protectively on her shoulder and spoke.

  “No. We cannot send Leandes back to Carlton. Who knows what her brother might do if she were to return. Perhaps he has cooled down by now and has realized that she would not help Shaltus. Or he might realize it if she were to return. But we have no way of knowing that. Leandes may have human blood, but she is also our chief’s granddaughter, and we must protect her.”

  Leah looked gratefully at Quinen.

  “It will be for the council to decide,” he continued. “And there have been cases where shiffems were readmitted to the tribe. Certainly she can remain for a few days while we try to sort this all out.”

  Geraed’s disapproval was plain, but he said nothing. “Thank you,” said Leah, her voice almost a sigh of relief.

  “Now I think you’d better go back to your room, Leandes. You’ve done what you can for Trask. Geraed and I have things to discuss.”

  Quinen squeezed her shoulder gently. The gesture seemed both affectionate and possessive.

  “All right.” Leah stared at the two men for a moment more, searching for some answer in their face to the still unexplained sequence of events that had brought her here. Then she sighed, for there were no answers, only more questions.

  Reluctantly she turned away and headed back to her room.

  Six

  Leah spent the next few days at Trask’s side. Although she transferred energy to him each day, his condition failed to improve. He never stirred from the deep coma.

  She saw nothing of Quinen or Geraed and was told that they were both busy at council meetings.

  Then on the evening of the fifth day there-was a sharp knock on her door.

  “Come in,” she called, glancing up from the garment she was sewing. She had been given several tunics and a pair of trousers but had to alter them. She was not as tall or thin as the average Sylvan female. She also had a new pair of light deerskin boots for riding; like the Sylvan she would remain barefoot in the treetops.

  Quinen strode into the room. Closing the door quietly behind him, he said, “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all.” Leah smiled at him. She was glad to see that he no longer wore his painted mask of authority. This was evidently a social visit rather than an official one.

  Without the savage covering his face was quite handsome, with well-shaped features and almost boyish good looks. It was quite a contrast to the harshness that the paint had imposed. Only his eyes were unchanged—the mismatched eyes of silver and topaz showed a keen intelligence, but with a coldness about them that disturbed Leah.

  She remembered a time many years before when his eyes always seemed full of good humor. Then there had been a series of raids against various Sylvan forests that had reminded Quinen of his parents’ death. The disagreements with his foster-father, Trask, had intensified. She had not seen much of him after that—he’d been sent to another forest for advanced training as a communicator, and her visits to the Ayers forest had become less frequent—but from what she had seen the intervening years had only increased the bitterness in his eyes.

  “I thought you might want some company,” he said. “I’d like that. I’ve hardly spoken to anyone in the last few days.”

  “Oh, I’ve brought you something,” said Quinen, pulling his hand from behind his back. In it was a bottle of dinuuci, a sweet liquor made from fermented delaap nuts.

  Leah laughed as he handed it to her. “I remember the last time you gave me some of this.”

  The big Sylvan grinned, and his eyes seemed to soften. “When was that? Five, six years ago? You’ve grown up since then.”

  “More like about seven years,” Leah replied. “I must have been an awful nuisance. Grandfather had invited me to spend a whole month with him, the longest I’ve ever spent here.”

  “And then he was called away on some business or other, leaving me in charge of you,” added Quinen.

  “I was just a kid then, about twelve years old, and I tagged along after you unmercifully. You were about seventeen. You were pretty disgusted at being saddled with a brat like me.”

  Quinen nodded. “You followed me around and copied everything I did.”

  “I guess I thought that if I could be more like you Trask would be proud of me.” Leah laughed again. “Then you decided to get back at me for being such a pest, and you offered me some of the dinuuci you were drinking. I guess I learned not to copy you—I got drunk, passed out, and oh was I sick the next day.”

  Quinen grinned sheepishly. “I guess it wasn’t very nice of me.” His voice grew more serious as his eyes caught hers and held them. “I got a little drunk too.”

  Leah blushed and abruptly turned away to study the almost empty shelves in the back of the room. “I think I’ve got some glasses here,” she said, going over to the shelves to look.

  She remembered what had happened only vaguely, but she knew that sometime during that night she’d found Quinen’s arm around her shoulders and that they’d shared several long and
rather intense kisses. They’d never mentioned the incident again, and she’d almost forgotten it. Suddenly she felt certain Quinen had not.

  “Here we are,” she said, taking two small, brown glasses from the shelf. Avoiding Quinen’s gaze, she took them back over to the table and poured the liquor. As she handed him one glass, she changed the subject.

  “This waiting hasn’t been easy. Has the tribal council decided anything about my staying in Ayers?”

  Quinen pulled up a chair, shrugged, and sat down at the table. “Not yet. But it looks like the council won’t force you to return to Carlton. They are still discussing under what conditions you’d be allowed to remain in Ayers. Meanwhile, they’ve sent a message to Lord S’Carlton denying knowledge of the Shaltus-controlled spellstone. Your half-brother must have realized you’d reached us—he’s called back the soldiers he’s had out hunting you.”

  Leah took a long sip of the dinuuci. It went down smoothly, without a bitter aftertaste, but the warm glow it produced was evidence of its potency. Then she returned to her seat, picked up the tunic she’d been working on, and started to hem it.

  “What does the council say about the Shaltuswraith?” she asked.

  “The consensus is that no Sylvan would aid a wraith. Most members of the council believe that you were wrong about Trask being poisoned or that if he were, it was by some accident. They don’t want to believe that any Sylvan could do such a thing.”

  “And you, what do you believe?” asked Leah, glancing at him from the corners of her eyes.

  “I am not so sure.”

  Quinen rose and paced the room. He looked worried. He circled the room once and stopped in front of the table where Leah worked. Then he refilled his glass of dinuuci and quickly downed it. Abstractly watching Leah’s fingers whip tight stitches in the cloth, he seemed to search for the right words.