The Spellstone of Shaltus

by Linda E. Bushyager

  A sudden breeze blew along the passageway. Along with the fragrances of jasmine and lavender it carried the soft sigh of a girl’s crying.

  Leah headed toward the sound. The path twisted through several hairpin curves, passed a large, marble statue of a lion devouring a deer, and turned into an oval glade dominated by a falcon-shaped marble fountain that poured a sparkling stream of water into a vase-shaped base.

  “Barbara!”

  Her half-sister sat on a bench in front of the font. Although she was crying softly, her tear-streaked face had a vacant expression without a trace of sorrow, fear, or distress. The blue rag she wore might once have been a nightgown, but it was too ripped and soiled to tell. Some of the stains seemed to be dirt, others blood. Jagged scratches, which might have been made by fingernails or claws, ran down her arms. The nicks on her legs and hands were more likely to have been caused by brush or brambles.

  Barbara seemed unaware of Leah’s presence. While she stared into space, her hands moved rhythmically up and down. Repeatedly the dirt-caked fingers wove a pattern about each other in the air. The hands fluttered like butterflies, almost as though they were independent creatures that would fly away if they weren’t still bound to their mistress by the lifeless arms.

  It took Leah a few seconds to understand the weird pantomime. The hands were holding an invisible flower, plucking the petals off one by one, tossing the stem away, taking another flower, and repeating the process.

  Leah reached toward her half-sister. Then she hesitated, fearing that she faced only a dangerous illusion. Her protective aura brightened and bubbled like molten gold.

  “Barbara!” She grabbed the girl’s shoulders and felt firm flesh. At the same time the sensitivity she’d always had toward her siblings confirmed the fact that this was her half-sister.

  She shook Barbara roughly. Although the girl’s eyes remained empty, her crying stopped with the quickness of a faucet being turned off.

  Leah pulled her sister to her feet, studied her vacant stare, and then slapped her face.

  Barbara’s brown eyes fluttered, focused, and widened as fear flooded into the blankness. She twisted in Leah’s arms like a terror-stricken doe bolting from a hunter.

  Leah held on and pulled the smaller girl around toward her. “Barbara. Barbara. It’s Leah. I won’t hurt you.”

  Recognition glimmered through the madness and fear in the fawn-colored eyes. Barbara stopped squirming. Her face was as tight as the skin of a drum.

  “Leah?”

  “Yes.” Carefully Leah released her sister from the none-too-gentle embrace.

  Barbara’s eyes darted from side to side, looking suspiciously around the glade. “He’s not just tricking me?” Her pale face was filled with confusion.

  “I’m real, not one of Shaltus’s illusions,” Leah answered, certain that Barbara was referring to the wraith. “How did you get away from him?”

  “Ran. Ran.” The girl’s hands pulled frantically at each other.

  Leah gently reached for her. Barbara jerked away, spun into a half-crouch, and fearfully wrapped her arms around herself.

  “It’s all right. We’ll find our way out of here.” Leah stretched out her arm. “Come with me.”

  “Out?”

  “Out.” She took one of Barbara’s twitching hands and caressed it gently between her own. “You’ll be safe. Come.”

  The smaller girl rose and followed Leah with uncertain steps toward one of the three paths leading from the fountain. Suddenly she sobbed and tugged urgently at Leah’s arm.

  “No. No. No.”

  “Not that way?” asked Leah curiously.

  “He’s … he’s there.” Barbara’s fingers entwined themselves around Leah’s wrist like snakes. They tugged her toward the second path, directly opposite the one that had led Leah to the fountain.

  “Out. Out.” The note of urgency in Barbara’s voice bordered on hysteria.

  “All right,” said Leah calmly. She sensed that Barbara was unstable, on the edge of madness or perhaps already over the brink. Anything might trigger her into flight.

  Holding her sister’s hand tightly, Leah expanded her protective aura around the girl. Then she led her half-sister into the hedge-lined corridor.

  Although Barbara’s fingers continued to twist animatedly, her face relaxed into a vacant stare. She followed Leah docilely.

  The path curved in on itself and then out and out. It was obviously heading to the periphery of the maze. An archway appeared in the wall of leaves. It was an exit identical to the entrance.

  “N’Omb be praised,” sighed Leah, ducking through.

  She’d begun to think she’d be trapped forever in the labyrinth.

  She pulled up short on the other side to stare ahead in shocked silence at the bright-hued garden running down to the steps of Castle Bluefield where several Sylvan stood as though they’d been waiting for her. Among them was Quinen. His expression changed from satisfaction to surprise to troubled dismay as he saw her.

  Before Leah could move, Barbara’s fingers twisted suddenly and slipped from her grip. Her half-sister’s hands knotted together and crashed like a rock into the top of Leah’s head.

  Thirteen

  “Tie her tightly now. Very tightly.”

  The rich contralto edging into Leah’s consciousness was hauntingly familiar, yet totally alien—Barbara’s voice, twisted and corrupted by the exultant menace of the wraith.

  Ignoring the throbbing ache at the back of her head, Leah blinked and forced her eyes open.

  Two young Sylvan warriors were tying her hands behind her back. Her pack and the precious flask of tomaad had been cast aside.

  Nearby stood Quinen. His unpainted face was expressionless, but his silver and topaz eyes seemed shadowed with guilt. Beyond him stood Barbara.

  Or rather what had once been Barbara.

  Leah had seen this face in marble—now the features were carved in flesh. The lips were a firm, cruel line. The hard jaw jutted out farther than it should have. The pale skin was as tight and smooth as a mask; yet the whole face had aged.

  Around Barbara’s neck hung Leah’s powerstone.

  Frantically Leah tried to contact the stone with her mind, even though she knew it would do her no good. She could not control the stone if it were farther than a hand’s length from her body. Without the spellstone for amplification, her psychic powers were too weak to do more than hold a leaf in midair or light a match.

  “Bring her to the castle,” said the wraith-possessed girl in a too-deep contralto. It made Leah’s flesh crawl.

  Then the image of Shaltus melted from Barbara’s features like liquid wax, leaving an empty pool, void of emotion or personality.

  Twitching in a puppet’s dance, Barbara marched off to the fortress.

  Leah shuddered. She tried to suppress the horror she felt more for herself than for her half-sister. How long would it take for the wraith to turn her into a lurching automaton?

  The Sylvan stood. They had finished their task.

  Leah tested the bonds. The rope was strong and tight enough to cut her flesh as she twisted against it.

  Measuring the distance to the tall hedges marking the boundary of the maze, she sized up her chance of getting to her feet and into the greenery. It was no good. If they couldn’t outrun her, the Sylvan could have the plants hold her.

  Quinen waved his soldiers off. “I want to talk to her for a moment,” he told them.

  He reached down and pulled her to her feet.

  “I am truly sorry to see you here, Leandes. I thought you were smart enough to stay away from this place. I figured that you must have warned Rowen of our ambush, but it never crossed my mind that you’d accompany him here.”

  She answered nonchalantly, hiding her fear. “When I saw your reception party I thought you were expecting me.”

  “The wraith stationed us here to catch any game flushed from its trap. I was expecting Rowen. Where is he?”

  “As
k the wraith.” Her smile was honey laced with hemlock.

  “No matter. We’ll snare him soon enough.” He avoided her gaze. “I am sorry you’re here.”

  “As sorry as you were to kill Trask?”

  His hands clenched. “How did you find out about that anyway?”

  “A bit of human magic … .” she taunted.

  Studying her face he frowned, and his voice softened. “I didn’t want to hurt Trask, but he found out I was an Expansionist. I don’t want to see you hurt either, but I have no choice.” He gripped her arm tightly and swung her around toward the castle. “Shaltus is waiting for you.”

  Leah pressed herself against his chest and stared earnestly into his eyes.

  “Break your pact with the wraith now, before it’s too late. Shaltus is just using you, can’t you see that? It will destroy you when it has what it wants.”

  “It uses me, and I use it. I can control it.”

  “Can you? It’s of human sorcery, not Sylvan. If you could not detect my simple spell, what makes you think you can stop its awesome power?”

  Doubt flickered across his face. Then he spun her roughly away.

  “No. It will die when all the S’Carltons do.” He gestured toward the castle. “It’s time for you to go in.”

  She searched his face, trying to think of another way she could appeal to him, but the doubt and guilt in his eyes had vanished into a sea of ice. He took her arm and led her toward the castle.

  All but one of the other Sylvan returned to their positions guarding the exit to the maze. The remaining man moved to Leah’s left side as a second escort.

  “I am sorry,” Quinen repeated.

  “I’m sorry for you,” Leah replied. There was nothing else to say.

  They entered the castle.

  It looked to Leah as though a century had passed since she’d been there last, though it had only been a little more than two years. She remembered that day well—the day the Shaltuswraith killed her father.

  The massive iron door leading into the inner courtyard was torn off its hinges. It looked like a crumpled fan that had been tossed aside by some giant. Although no damage had been apparent from the outside, the inner wall of the Clock Tower was ripped away and piled into a mound of rubble in the center of the yard. Broken floors jutted from the outer wall; the roof had collapsed; the spiral staircase had melted into a pile of slag.

  A pit gaped where the small N’Omb chapel used to be. The forebuilding to the keep seemed to have been gutted by fire. Only the exterior stones of the keep itself were unbroken.

  Inside, the walls glistened with slime. The carpet was a rotting mass of corruption. Velvet drapes hung in crimson tatters. Once-beautiful tapestries dripped from the walls like fungus. Ornamental gold leaf peeled from the ceilings, and plaster oozed like pus.

  The air stank of decay. A thick gray paste of dust coated the wooden floor. Cobwebs hung across side corridors and empty doorways like drapes.

  They led her through the Hall of Mirrors, up the staircase, and into the Great Hall.

  The overstuffed couches with silken covers that had lined the walls were gone. So was the great oak table.

  A few of its ornately carved chairs remained, broken and tossed like firewood into a pile near the stair. Roaring with scarlet flames that had no apparent fuel, the hearth cast strange shadows across barren walls and lofty windows with finely carved paneling and tracery, to the graceful three-sided oriel at the other end of the hall. The alcove by the bay window held several life-sized statues of Shaltus.

  A rack dominated the room. Bloodstains spotted its wood. Other instruments of torture, glinting coldly in the half-light, lay on a nearby table.

  Several figures huddled against the far wall: Barbara, with unseeing eyes and weaving hands that plucked invisible petals from a nonexistent flower; a scarecrow-thin giant with half his face gone, apparently eaten away, who played with a rat; and a deformed man whose twisted arms bent unnaturally, as though they had extra joints. The last had a crooked foot, an oddly jutting hip, a broken nose, and an almost-bald head.. He was a missing tradesman whom Leah had last seen straight, whole, and thick-haired.

  Terror ripped through her, but her face remained granite-hewed. Her hands trembled. Salty sweat burned wrists rubbed raw against their bonds.

  She stared at her spellstone. It still hung around Barbara’s neck like a worthless trinket. If the wraith had left the stone in plain view to torment her, it had succeeded. It was frustrating to know the stone was so close, yet utterly useless. Barbara was as oblivious to the stone as to the world around her. She was hopelessly insane, ensorcelled, or both. And even if she hadn’t been, it would have done no good, for she had neither the training nor the talent to use the gem.

  Abruptly, gloating laughter filled the room. The sound was as dark as night, as cold as frost, as deep as a grave.

  In front of the fire stood a shadow-shape that seemed to pull darkness from the corners of the room, piling shadow on shadow, building into the phantom shape of a man.

  Its face was a dark image of the ones carved in marble across the hall, its smile a cruel slash.

  The wraith moved toward them. Its specter-body flowed like mist, yet somehow maintained the illusion of life, seeming to walk, talk, and breathe like a mortal man.

  “Your father must be repaid the debt of my death,” it said. “You shall suffer as I did.”

  The wraith reached out toward Leah. Quinen drew back an arm’s length behind her, and the Sylvan guard backstepped to the door as quickly as possible.

  Shaltus’s fingers were icicles that numbed as they passed through her arm and seared as they withdrew.

  It stepped away, leaving her arm throbbing with excruciating pain. Yet Leah sensed that all the tomaad she’d drunk lessened the effect. She could still move her fingers.

  “Put her on the rack,” the wraith ordered Quinen. “Then get out.” The voice cracked through the air like a whip, sending the second Sylvan bolting out the door.

  Quinen’s back stiffened. His hand tightened around Leah’s arm, but he made no move toward the torture frame.

  “Is this necessary? Can’t you give her a quick death?” he protested.

  “You question me?” roared the wraith.

  The giant and the tradesman jerked upright, their eyes soulless.

  They ran forward, pulled Leah from Quinen’s grasp, and took her to the rack. She struggled and kicked at them, but she couldn’t free herself. Both seemed inhumanly strong. Their hands were iron claws that bound her, spread-eagled, on the table.

  The tall Sylvan still faced the wraith. His face reddened angrily, but he said nothing.

  “I shall enjoy her pain.” Shaltus’s voice was a menacing rasp.

  His shadow-eyes appraised Quinen with cold calculation. “She is a beautiful woman—you might like to have her.” His smile became a leer.

  The giant smirked and the merchant grinned. Trembling uncontrollably, Leah strained against the unyielding ropes.

  Quinen grimaced. “No!”

  “No?” The wraith seemed amused. “It’s easy.”

  He pointed at Barbara. The girl came alive. Her lips curved into a sensuous smile as she spun into a wanton dance.

  “Her sister was very nice,” chuckled Shaltus.

  Barbara threw herself against Quinen, kissed him, and ran her hands over his body. Taunting and teasing him, she whirled away.

  The giant ran to her. They circled one another in a sinuous dance that became an obscene caricature of lovemaking.

  Leah tried to turn away, to close her eyes, heart, and mind to what was happening, but the Shaltus-force jerked her head back and made her watch.

  “I can control her or not,” said the wraith with a sly look at Quinen, “as it pleases you.”

  It gestured toward Barbara. Suddenly her attitude changed from willingness to resistance. Wild horror replaced the blank look on her face. She whimpered like a terrified child.

  The merchan
t and the giant grabbed her arms and pulled her to the floor. Clawing at them, Barbara tried to crawl away, but they held her fast.

  Then one of the statues of Shaltus in the back of the room quivered and began to move. The marble gleamed like mother of pearl in the darkness. The sculpture lurched off its base, the stone groaned and shifted, and it awkwardly walked forward with thudding steps.

  Barbara saw the animated statue and screamed. Her eyes held madness and dread.

  The life-sized sculpture reached her.

  Leah cried out as she suddenly realized what the statue was going to do. She gasped with nausea, but the wraith’s power would not even allow her that release. She shuddered with dry heaves as the wraith forced her to watch.

  Quinen was also rooted in place, helpless even to avert his eyes.

  The wraith’s laughter was a deep, sensuous exultation.

  When the stone creature finished with Barbara, it rose and shuffled toward the rack.

  “Now it’s your turn,” said the wraith.

  “Barbara, my spellstone!” cried Leah. Her eyes fastened desperately on the amber pendant as she struggled helplessly. But Barbara lay twitching on the floor. Her face was contorted in madness, her hands again weaving through the air plucking nonexistent petals.

  “No!” shouted Quinen. He moved intc the statue’s path. “She’s a Sylvan. Our bargain never included her in the first place, and it certainly never included this horror.”

  The marble beast froze in its steps.

  The wraith laughed.

  “Bargain? You stupid tree-eater—did you really think I’d keep any pact with the likes of you? I know what you’ve been thinking. You thought you’d help me and then be rid of me when I had destroyed the S’Carltons and their kingdom.”

  It laughed again, and the sound raked across Leah’s skull like a steel rasp against bone.

  “But that won’t happen. As each one dies I’ll just get stronger, and when they’re dead, I will control Carlton, not you.”

  The statue lurched forward again, heading for Leah.

  “What have I done?” Quinen murmured in horror. His face purpled with rage and shame.