The Spellstone of Shaltus

by Linda E. Bushyager

  “Tim, over here,” he called. Fletcher dried his face on the sleeve of his light cotton shirt, slipped his spectacles back on, and walked over to the road.

  The two men studied the ground. Apparently they’d found some fresh tracks.

  Klaus looked up with interest, finished refilling his canteen, and strode over to them.

  “What have you found?” he asked.

  “It looks like a party of horsemen passed by here less than an hour ago. The horses were large ones carrying heavy loads,” said Fletcher.

  The lieutenant scratched his several-days-old beard thoughtfully. “The Sylvan?”

  “It looks like it.”

  Michael Rowen stooped over to study the hoof-prints once more. He picked up a loose stone that looked lost inside his large hands and absentmindedly tossed it back and forth. Straightening abruptly, he hurled the rock toward the lake. It skipped across the water several times before sinking.

  Then he called to Leah and Rusty. “We’d better get going. I’ll ride on ahead as scout.”

  In a few minutes the rest of the group followed him. “How many Sylvan were there?” asked Leah as her horse came abreast of Fletcher’s.

  “Eight. It looks as though one of them is carrying Lady Barbara.”

  Leah glanced back at the precog. He’d been drinking heavily ever since his trance, and he’d grown withdrawn and uncommunicative. “We may have to carry Rusty soon, at the rate he’s going.”

  “He’ll be all right. Michael, Rusty, and I have been a team for a long time. I’ve learned that Rusty is never quite as drunk as he appears to be, or as he’d like to be, for that matter.”

  “How long have you been with Lord Rowen?”

  “About six years. He’s known Rusty longer than that.”

  Leah studied Fletcher’s face, noting his high cheekbones, long nose, and deepset brown eyes, which were partially obscured by gold wire-rimmed glasses. She wondered how he fit into a team of sorcerer and pre-cog, and she wondered if he really did carry a copy of The Book of Revelations.

  “How did you come to join him?” she asked.

  Fletcher frowned slightly and looked away. “It’s a long story. I guess I’m a misfit like Rusty and Michael, but somehow we all seem to fit together.”

  “A misfit? I can understand why you’d say that about Rusty. He’s a precog who doesn’t want to be one. But I don’t see why you and Lord Rowen are misfits.”

  “I told you that I’m a scholar. I guess I’ve always been more interested in the past than in the present.” He looked uncomfortable.

  “I’m out of step with the world, that’s all.”

  Sensing that he didn’t want to talk about himself, Leah asked, “What about Rowen? He’s reputed to be one of the most powerful sorcerers around.”

  “But he’s a sorcerer without a kingdom,” answered Fletcher with a sad smile. “He may be the best, but he has to wander like some sort of itinerant pedlar selling his wares. The rest of the great sorcerers have land, wealth, power.”

  “Wasn’t there a kingdom of Rowen once?”

  “Yes. It was destroyed in the Great War with S’Shegan. Most of the S’Rowen family were killed. Michael is probably the last of them. He’s a Rowen now, not a S’Rowen, for there is no kingdom left. It lay almost in the center of the badlands.”

  Leah shivered, thinking of the area where most of the battles of the Great War had been fought twenty years ago. There had been castles there once, and farms and forests. But the area had been devastated by fighting, fire, and sorcery. The latter had done the most damage, as spell upon spell altered the land into a barren wasteland of deserts, canyons, and even volcanoes. It was said that wraiths, runespells, and spots of evil magic remained in some areas. The badlands were cursed. There were no farms there now, no castles, no kingdoms.

  “Michael could have used his powers to gain a kingdom, someone else’s of course. It happens all the time. But that is just not his way.” Fletcher sighed. “Sometimes he seems happy enough to be free of the responsibilities, but I know that deep down he’d like to be a lord in more than name. Perhaps that’s why he’s so eager to rescue your sister.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Oh, you must know that Lord S’Carlton has hinted that if Michael destroys the wraith he’ll arrange a marriage between him and Lady Barbara. They’d be given Castle Bluefield and all the land reclaimed from the wraith.”

  “What?” Leah’s stomach twisted into a knot that wound tighter and tighter. She was surprised more by her feeling of distress than by the arrangement itself. An alliance between the S’Carltons and a great sorcerer like Rowen made a lot of sense, even if he had no kingdom of his own. Why did it upset her?

  She forced herself to speak calmly. “No, I didn’t know that. Interesting.”

  “So you can see why Michael chose to go after Lady Barbara and ignore Rusty’s warnings. Under other circumstances he probably would have taken Rusty’s advice. We’ve learned to rely on it.”

  The trail suddenly angled away from the lake, curved sharply downhill, and crossed over a wooden bridge spanning a fast-moving stream—the Bluestone River. On the opposite bank the road forked, with one path continuing southward parallel to the lake, the other meandering alongside the river.

  Michael Rowen had halted by the fork and was examining the ground. “It looks like the Sylvan have split into two groups,” he said when they reached him.

  Tim prodded his horse forward, circled, and inspected both routes.

  “I can’t tell which one is the group with Lady Barbara. Both trails eventually go to Bluefield.”

  “Can’t you see any difference in the tracks?” asked Klaus.

  “They’ve evidently paired the Lady with one of the smaller Sylvan so that all the horses are carrying about the same weight.”

  “Leah, can you sense anything?” said Rowen, looking at her thoughtfully.

  She avoided his gaze, wondering why it made her feel uncomfortable. Cupping her spellstone in her hands, she sought contact with her half-sister or the Sylvan, but they were out of her range.

  She shook her head.

  “Then we’d better split up,” decided Rowen. “Tim, you and Leah follow the stream. Rusty, Klaus, and I will keep to the lake road. If you determine that they don’t have Barbara, double back and join us. We’ll do the same. If they have her, keep following them, but don’t start anything until we rejoin you. For all we know these Sylvan could have another of Shaltus’s damned programmed stones. If so, I doubt a single sorcerer could defeat them.”

  “Their horses aren’t moving very fast,” added Fletcher. “The tracks indicate that the animals have been traveling hard and are getting pretty tired. It shouldn’t take too long to catch up to them.”

  “You’d better take some more of the tomaad from my pack horse,” said Leah. Each of the party already had taken a full canteen, but now that they were separating it seemed prudent to divide the supply of the drug more equitably.

  “That’s a good idea.” Rowen smiled at her as he helped himself to a cask of tomaad. He looped another canteen of the drug over Rusty’s shoulder. The precog looked drunk and not much interested in what was going on.

  “Give me another canteen too,” said Fletcher.

  Leah removed a flask from her pack horse and passed it to him. He pulled the strap over his head so that the canteen hung across his chest.

  Leah glanced back at Rowen. The sorcerer was still looking at her with a warm smile. She smiled back shyly and looked quickly away.

  “Good luck,” said Rowen.

  “Good hunting,” Tim Fletcher called back.

  Then the two groups separated.

  “It seems odd that the Sylvan party split up,” remarked Fletcher, leading the way down the rather wide trail that ran along the bank of the Bluestone.

  Leah prodded her horse into a trot alongside his gelding. “I know. There’s nothing out this way except for Bluefield. Where would they be going except ther
e? They wouldn’t have sent out a hunting party either. The Sylvan carry their own supply of -food since their diet consists primarily of skytree nuts and sap, and they eat very little meat.”

  “Could it be that they realize we are following them, and they’ve split up so that we would also separate?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Leah replied.

  Frowning, Fletcher nodded at the confirmation of his suspicion.

  He pulled up the sword that hung from the front of his saddle, unsheathed the blade, and laid it across his knees.

  “It’s too bad Rusty didn’t see anything today,” he said.

  Leah smiled. “In his condition he was lucky to see the road.” She turned toward Fletcher. “Why does he drink so much, anyway? Why doesn’t he want to use his abilities?”

  Fletcher pushed his glasses back against the bridge of his nose and glanced at her thoughtfully. “I guess it’s no secret. He was an advisor to the S’Rowens, the S’Yorks, and some of the other nobles during the Great War. He used his precognition to plan battle strategies against S’Shegan—and they were successful.”

  “He didn’t drink then?”

  “No. I’ve heard that his powers were really remarkable in those days. He could have looked at a road like this and told us what we’d meet at every bend and curve in it for the next twenty kilometers. He was evidently instrumental in devising the plan that finally destroyed S’Shegan. However, he didn’t notice that among all its rippling side effects was one that would involve a small town in what was left of the kingdom of Rowen. Castle Rowen itself had already been destroyed. There was a skirmish near the village. S’Shegan’s men captured the area and destroyed the town. Rusty’s wife and children were there.”

  “They were killed?” she asked.

  “Yes. But you see, they wouldn’t have been if Rusty hadn’t used his powers and acted on what he saw. He blames himself for what happened.”

  Leah nodded. “He must be afraid to use his powers. That’s what he was talking about when he tried to explain his precognition to us. He didn’t want to give us advice because he might have overlooked one of the variables and ended up sending us into a danger greater than the one he was warning us about.”

  “That’s it. But in all the years I’ve known him he’s never steered me wrong.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that,” Leah replied with a wry smile, “considering that all he was able to foretell was that we were riding into danger and probably wouldn’t be able to save Barbara anyway.”

  Lightning flashed in the sky behind them. Thunder pealed. Leah’s mare shied at the sound. She leaned forward, stroked its coarse brown mane, and soothed it with a soft mental command.

  “It looks like we might get some of that rain yet,” said Fletcher. He slowed his horse to examine the tracks once more. “We seem to be catching up to them. Can you sense anything?”

  Murmuring a spell, Leah searched the area for signs of the Sylvan. She felt a faint stirring. “Barbara …” she said aloud. Then the feeling faded. She closed her eyes, striving to renew contact, but she was only aware of where Barbara had been. It was like following a whiff of perfume. “There …” She opened her eyes and found herself pointing to the northwest, away from the path of the river they followed.

  “What? Are you sure of that?” asked Fletcher.

  “I’ve always been especially sensitive to my siblings. I don’t think I could be mistaken. Maybe they’ve turned off this trail.”

  “But why would they head away from Bluefield?” Fletcher leaned down to study the tracks again. Then he prodded his gelding into a swift trot.

  When they’d gone several kilometers farther, Fletcher pulled up abruptly, dismounted, and again examined the ground.

  “They have turned off—here.” He gestured toward the rocky slope of an old creek bed that headed northward, back into the mountains. The stream was almost dry, with only a narrow gully filled with fast-moving water. “All four horsemen.”

  “Why have they gone this way?” asked Leah.

  “I don’t know. If they realized that we were following them, they may have wanted to throw us off their trail. It looks pretty rocky. It will be hard to follow their tracks.” He remounted. “We’d better keep after them before the rain washes out what prints there are.”

  Leah studied the black clouds. The new path headed right into the storm. Bolts of lightning cracked the sky a few kilometers ahead.

  It was still oppressively hot, but Leah shivered. She felt suddenly tense and apprehensive.

  They followed the creek along a ravine that gradually deepened into a steep-walled canyon. As it began to rain, the creek quickly overflowed the gully and began to widen toward its old banks.

  Leah concentrated on following the faint impression that Barbara and the Sylvan rode somewhere ahead of them. She called out to Fletcher.

  “Even if the rain destroys the tracks, I think we’ll be able to follow them. Barbara’s just on the edge of my range, and we should be closing in on the group.”

  “Good. But I wonder how Michael’s going to track us if this …”

  His words became a cry of surprise.

  A dark shape had launched itself at him from somewhere in the rocks above.

  At that moment something slammed into Leah’s back. Her horse screamed and reared in fright. Leah twisted against ripping claws, lost her balance, and fell to the ground.

  Instantly the beast was on top of her.

  Impressions of tawny fur, her fingers digging into a dirty white throat to keep the small head and discolored teeth from her neck, black patches of fur on each side of the muzzle, golden eyes with narrow black slits, claws raking her arms.

  A puma.

  Her spellstone flared into life. Her protective shield pushed back the cat. She reached for its mind and felt the will of another. A Sylvan had it under control.

  She cried a spell that hurled a bolt of energy into its chest. As it collapsed, the smell of its singed fur blended with the musky cat odor.

  She caught sight of Fletcher, sword in hand, standing over the body of another cat. A third circled him warily and then sprang for the kill. His blade flashed and cut into the golden body.

  Something moved at the edge of her vision. She turned toward it and met its frenzied roar with a murmured incantation. Her spell caught the male puma and silenced it as it fell.

  Now there was only the noise of the storm that had hit as they fought.

  Leah stood and surveyed the canyon. Four cats lay dead. There were no signs of others. She probed the area for the Sylvan, but they were out of her range now, and the trace of Barbara’s presence had vanished as well.

  Fletcher stood a few meters away with his back to the wind, his head tilted upward, and his sword extended. He let the rain wash the blood from the scratches on his face and arms and from the edge of his blade.

  Lightning struck somewhere nearby, fully illuminating the storm-darkened canyon. The horses were gone—stampeded by fear back the way they had come.

  As Leah tried to contact them telepathically, another bolt hit, lighting the area. Leah noticed the stream. It had become a raging torrent of water fed by the rain funneling down through the mountains. It had overflowed the old bank of the stream and was rising rapidly toward the edge of the canyon floor where they stood. Remembering the steep walls of the ravine, Leah felt a surge of panic.

  “Fletcher, are you all right?” she said, running over to him.

  “Yes.”

  “Look at the water.” She pointed. It was already beginning to lap at their heels.

  “Where are the horses?”

  Leah frowned, concentrated once more on locating the animals, and found nothing. “Stampeded. They are out of my range to control them.”

  Fletcher grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the side of the canyon. “We’ll have to climb. This flood could trap us.”

  Leah scrambled up the rain-slick boulders at the canyon wall. She turned to help the shorter
man as the climb became steeper.

  “I hope we don’t run into more of those mountain lions,” Fletcher said. “Strange that so many should attack like that, and in this storm too.”

  Leah shook her head. “They were under Sylvan control. Some Sylvan have the ability to communicate with and control animals. They act as the tribe’s defenders, protecting the forest from wild animals and using their telepathic ability to hunt for game. Evidently one of the Sylvan we’re trailing is a defender.”

  “Could he attack again?”

  “It’s unlikely that there are more cats nearby that he could use. Besides, the defenders usually can’t ‘path over more than a few kilometers. I don’t sense anyone that close to us now.”

  Fletcher brushed his sodden hair back from his face, flicked raindrops from his spectacles with his fingertips, and stared at the muddy flood of water below them.

  “But I thought some Sylvan could telepath for hundreds of kilometers?”

  “A few specially trained ones can, with each other. They are the communicators who maintain contact between the Sylvan forests. However, they can’t control animals at that range.”

  “Hey, there’s a cave!” Fletcher cried, as he searched for their best path upward. “I don’t think the water will reach that high. We can use some shelter from this storm.”

  Leah followed as he ascended, but she didn’t see the opening until several bright bursts of lightning illuminated the dark recess. There seemed to be some sort of writing on the rocks edging it, but she couldn’t be sure.

  At last they reached the crevice. They were high above the river and out of reach of its flood waters.

  Leah grabbed Fletcher’s arm as lightning flashed again. Now she could clearly see the writing that outlined the cave opening.

  “We can’t go in there!” She pointed to the script and designs. “It’s a forbidden place of N’Omb.”

  “Apparently,” replied Fletcher without concern. He studied with equal interest the warnings that she could read and the ancient writing she could not. Then he turned to enter the cave.