The Spellstone of Shaltus

by Linda E. Bushyager

  “I think it’s time for us to separate,” said the sorcerer.

  Fletcher nodded. “Here’s the device.” He removed a large leather bag looped through his belt. “The fuse is ready to go. Light it, and then get as far away as you can as fast as you can. You’ll only have a few seconds. Do you have the matches I gave you?”

  “Yes.”

  Leah stared curiously at the bag. She wondered what sort of weapon was inside. Where had Tim Fletcher gotten the ancient magic powder that would activate it?

  Silently she said a prayer to N’Omb, asking for forgiveness for her part in using the forbidden thing. Yet at the same time she prayed that N’Omb would bless the device and make it work. She did not want to think about what would happen if it did not.

  “Don’t let the powder get wet,” advised Fletcher. “The pipe is wrapped in oilskin, so it should be dry; you’ll have to keep it that way when you take it out.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you sure you know what to do?”

  “I’m sure.” Rowen studied the raging storm and the pattern of flowers, statues, and vanished gardens that led to the gazebo. “After I’ve gone, hit the structure with everything you’ve got. That will have to do as our diversion.”

  “Will you be able to make it without our shields?” asked Leah.

  Rowen’s forehead creased; then his lips curved upward in a wry smile. “I hope so.”

  He dismounted and handed his reins to Fletcher. “There’s no use taking the horse; it has no immunity.”

  The ex-priest clasped the sorcerer’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

  “Be careful,” Leah whispered.

  Michael Rowen slipped out of Fletcher’s protective aura and ran down the hillside. Leah watched worriedly as he disappeared into the shrubbery. The wraith took no action against him. She wondered if his immunity to the effects of magic also protected him from its detection.

  “Let’s go,” yelled Fletcher.

  Urging their horses in the direction of the next hill they began a united spell. Their auras formed a double circle of force over the horses. It filtered out some of the fear that Shaltus still directed at them.

  What remained was a baseless, debilitating terror that tried to cloud their thinking.

  Fletcher signaled toward the marble pavilion. Together they blasted it with a spell that half-melted the roof but left the marble columns and base undamaged.

  Suddenly the marble glowed. It shimmered and shifted. When the light died out the roof had been restored to an untouched stone dome.

  Laughter mocked them. Shadows swirled out of thin air. They caked against the double circle of shields.

  A psychic probe rammed through the auras like a sharp steel spike. Leah pushed it away, but not before she felt Shaltus’s presence touch her mind. Its malice lingered, staining her thoughts.

  Fletcher’s face was ashen.

  The throbbing thunder became Shaltus’s voice, laughing at them. “An unfrocked priest and a half-breed fighting me! What fools you are! If the High Lord of Carlton could not destroy me, what makes you think you can?”

  The air around them bubbled and popped like boiling lava. Waves of fear pounded against the shields and trickled through like water filtering through sand.

  Leah’s head throbbed with pain. She tried to block the terror and the other false emotions that flooded in with it—sadness, shame, and almost unbearable loneliness.

  “Priest! So you call yourself a priest. But your friends called you a traitor, didn’t they?” Shaltus’s laughter was the roar of the ocean against granite cliffs.

  Sweat beaded Fletcher’s forehead. The false emotions were strengthening the effect of the insults. He squeezed Leah’s hand, recited another spell, and tried to ignore the wraith.

  Leah and Fletcher aimed beams of force against the gazebo. Flames crowned its domed roof without effect.

  “They kicked you out. They spit on your ideas, didn’t they?” the wraith hissed. “You failed your friends, you failed your god, you failed yourself.”

  Fletcher’s hand shook within Leah’s. She gripped it more tightly.

  Golden spears of lightning streaked out of the dark clouds. As they countered the bolts some were deflected, while others exploded above them into sparkling light-shards. The attack continued with unrelenting ferocity, until they could not stop all of the blows.

  Lightning began to hit them.

  Leah’s skin tingled, and her hair stood on end. While her shield continued to absorb the force adequately, Fletcher’s began to fade into a red-and brown aura as it failed.

  “Fight it,” yelled Leah. “Don’t let it get to you.”

  The ex-priest pulled up his flask of tomaad and took a long sip. He swayed in his saddle. His face was moon-white. Then his shield turned pink and orange as it stabilized on a weaker level.

  Leah hurled energy at the gazebo. As the silver shafts burst harmlessly against the marble, she caught sight of Rowen near the base. The wraith had evidently become aware of his presence. It was using a shadow-cloud of sorcery against him. The shadows spun around Rowen like a swarm of angry bees, but did not harm him.

  “And a half-breed, a Sylvie bitch …” The wraith’s voice jerked her upright. “Are you a whore like your mother?”

  Leah’s face reddened. Fear and shame flooded her senses, throwing her off balance. She knew that the wraith was behind the emotions, trying to break her concentration. She tried to close her mind to its insults and to the false emotions that pricked at her thoughts; it was not so easy to ignore the real emotions that they stirred inside.

  She willed herself back in control and continued her attack on the gazebo. However, her spells still bounced off the marble monument without effect.

  “Are you a tree-eater like her? Or a tree-lover like your father?”

  She threw another spell at the gazebo’s roof. Michael Rowen had reached its steps. The dome trembled slightly as she watched the tall sorcerer slip inside.

  “You are as stupid and weak as S’Carlton was. I destroyed him, and I will destroy you.” Shaltus chuckled. His laugh became the wind’s roar as it whirled into a funnel-shaped cloud around them.

  Made more of sorcery than wind, the tornado enveloped them in streamers of light that exploded into multicolored bursts of force. Clouds of vapor boiled through the air outside their shields. The wraith tried to blast apart the barriers.

  Abruptly Fletcher’s shield collapsed in a shower of sparks.

  Leah’s aura shuddered under the full force of the wraith’s attack. The world spun around her. Bands of fire cut into her skull. Somehow she held the shield in place.

  She was aware of Fletcher’s hand still inside hers and of a weak trickle of power from him. She was surprised that he was still conscious.

  The burning in her head spread down over her body. Formless terror wrapped her in numbing fear. “Give up, tree-eater. Why prolong your pain?”

  “No!” she cried stubbornly.

  Energy seemed to be leaking out of her shield faster than she could channel it in.

  What was taking Rowen so long? She had to continue to distract the wraith somehow.

  The memory of Rusty’s voice echoed through her mind—“It will use your weaknesses against you. You must use its weakness against it.”

  She shouted at the wind and shadows. “I may be a half-breed, but at least I’m alive. You are nothing more than a whisper of thought trapped in rock.”

  Lightning hit and exploded against her shield, spewing out jagged bursts of light and flames that crackled along the edge of her aura.

  “You cannot destroy me so easily,” she called haughtily, hiding fear and fatigue. She knew she could not take much more. “I’m of S’Carlton’s blood, and he is the one who killed the man Shaltus. But you are not Shaltus.” Shadows like talons scratched restlessly against her shield. “There is nothing of him left but an echo. And even echoes eventually die.”

  “Is this an echo?” laughed the
Shaltuswraith as the tornado whirled up again with deafening force.

  The ground shook. The air roared. Only the thin golden haze protected Leah, Fletcher, Barbara, and the horses from annihilation.

  The aura began to fade. It turned orange, then pink.

  In a last desperate effort Leah diverted some of her power from the shield into an illusion. Her aura dimmed further, to a dangerously weak brown.

  In front of the horses stood the illusion of a castle wall. A silver cage hung from the battlement. Inside was a man.

  The man smiled cruelly as he looked away from the taunting crowd below him. The cage fit him like a glove, forcing him to stand. Open sores, bruises, and marks of a lash showed where he’d been tortured.

  Then the illusion altered. The man seemed to pale. The arms chained above his head were thinner. A light growth of beard was beginning to cover his firm jaw. His features twisted in torment. He opened his mouth to scream, but his voice, hoarse from hours of screaming, was a dry rasp.

  The wind howled. Shadows pounded frantically against Leah’s shield.

  The image changed again. The man hung limply inside the cage. Flies buzzed around his head. The corpse grew bloated. Pus oozed out of the flesh. Then the flesh began to rot away until bones peeked out of the corruption.

  Something that was part lightning and storm, part shadow and magic, part whirlwind and night smashed into the illusion and ripped it apart. Then it hit Leah’s shield.

  Just as Leah’s shield failed altogether, an explosion went off inside the pavilion. The Shaltus-force surrounding her shattered into a thousand shadows, which disintegrated and vanished.

  White light and flame flared through the marble pillars. One of the columns rocked, cracked, and fell. The rest of the building shook, then settled back into place.

  Stunned and disoriented, Leah waited for Shaltus’s next blow. Then she realized that Michael Rowen had blown up the wraithstone.

  Leaves, branches, dirt, and rocks, hurled into the air by the explosion, fell to the earth in a black rain. The unnatural clouds dissipated, revealing dusk-darkened purple sky.

  The silence now seemed as strange as the roaring wind had been.

  “It’s dead,” murmured Fletcher. “Gone.”

  Leah nodded wearily as her senses confirmed the wraithstone’s destruction. She was watching for Rowen.

  The sorcerer scrambled up from the ground where he’d taken cover. He waved at them.

  Leah sighed with relief. She prodded her horse forward cautiously, and Fletcher followed. No sorcery blocked their way.

  “Did you destroy the wraithstone completely?” asked Fletcher, dismounting next to Rowen.

  “Your device blew it apart. Actually there were several spellstones linked together around the central wraithstone. Evidently the wraith took over the stones of the sorcerers it killed and used them to enhance its power. When I set up the device I noticed a broken spellstone and two others touching the wraithstone.”

  “So that was how the wraith got its enormous power,” muttered Fletcher. “Let’s take a look.” He led the way into the marble pavilion.

  “The broken stone may have been my father’s,” said

  Leah. “Shaltus tried to plant the other pieces of it at Carlton. There must have been a large part left. Are you sure all the stones were destroyed?”

  Rowen nodded. “Take a look for yourself. The explosion shattered the stones into a thousand pieces.”

  A life-sized statue of Shaltus lay on the floor of the gazebo. Its arms were broken. Its face was smashed—only the mocking smile remained.

  Crystal shards of spellstones covered the ground and the blackened, cracked altar.

  “I think it would be best if we destroy all the fragments,” said Rowen. “They have no power now, but I’d rather be careful.”

  Numb with exhaustion, Leah watched silently as Fletcher transferred his spellstone back to Rowen in a short, intricate ritual of spells.

  Then the sorcerer began to obliterate the tiny pieces of stone. One by one they vanished into fire and ash until none was left.

  It was over.

  Fifteen

  The walls of the room were as familiar as an old glove, but now they seemed constricting and chafing, not comfortable or comforting. Since her father’s death Leah had tried to think of them as her walls, her room, but they had never really been hers.

  All that was truly hers S now lay piled on her bed, bagged and packed and ready to go. There were clothes, toiletries, a bow and a quiver of arrows, a couple of books, a pearl necklace that her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday, a handful of coins saved over the years, cooking and camping gear, and a telescoping looking glass that she’d had since childhood.

  She wondered if she should say good-bye before she left. But she really had no one to say good-bye to.

  Since they’d returned to Castle Carlton she’d seen little of Rusty, Fletcher, or Michael Rowen. She’d assumed that they were busy negotiating with her half-brother to seal their bargain for a kingdom in exchange for destroying the wraith.

  Barbara was being cared for by the Bishop Merion and several other N’Omb priests. They’d sent for some healers from the White Tower of N’Omb. The bishop seemed to think that they’d be able to erase most of the girl’s horrifying memories and restore her sanity. They might have to wipe out some older memories as well and then reeducate her, but eventually she’d be almost normal.

  The wedding would probably be postponed, but Leah guessed that within a year Barbara would be well enough to marry Michael Rowen.

  Leah clenched her fists. She tried not to think about it. She didn’t want to know why it was bothering her.

  Perhaps that was why she didn’t seek out Rowen and say good-bye. She didn’t want to find out how painful that would be.

  As for her half-brother, she’d composed a simple note telling him that she’d left—and would not return. When the servants arrived to help her with her baggage, she’d give one of them the note, to take to Richard.

  All during the long trip back to Castle Carlton from Bluefield Leah had tried not to think about the future. She’d joked with Rusty and Fletcher, chatted with Rowen, tended Barbara. She’d buried her feelings and fears beneath a mask of easy comradery. However, deep down she’d known all along that she would never be able to stay at Carlton, even if Richard accepted her return.

  And he’d had to. When Michael Rowen described how she’d helped destroy the wraith, her half-brother had had no other choice. Yet his attitude was more of forgiveness than remorsefulness—as though she had done something wrong in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

  He’d condescended to let her remain at Carlton. But that was impossible. While she might be able to forgive Richard for ordering her execution, she would never be able to forget it.

  When the news arrived that Geraed had taken over as chief of the Ayers tribe after receiving word of Quinen’s death, Leah had thought about returning there. But she knew she could never really fit in as a Sylvan, even if they allowed a shiffem to stay;

  She wondered if Geraed had exposed the Expansionist’s plot. The message hadn’t said. It had only told of Geraed’s new position and of his offer to meet with Richard S’Carlton to discuss a new treaty. With Geraed as chief war between the Sylvan and the humans might be averted. However, Leah doubted that a lasting peace was possible—there was too much hatred.

  The sound of someone knocking on her door interrupted Leah’s thoughts. She opened the door and let in the servants. While they gathered her belongings together, she handed one of the women the letter she’d written to Richard. Then they carried her things down to the stable.

  After they left she studied the room once more, searching for anything she might have missed.

  The bare walls were cold and impersonal; yet in a way Leah hated to leave them. Carlton was the only security she had ever known, and now she was turning her back on it. She felt foolish and afraid, but she was too stub
born to change her mind.

  She turned to leave and caught sight of herself in the mirror on her dresser. Her too-pale face stared back, impassively, locked in control, concealing the uncertainties and fear that made her tremble inwardly. Her moon-silver hair was plaited and bound around her head, human-style, and tucked neatly under a cap. She hated the rigidity of it, the tightness of the braids pulling at her scalp, the silly covering that really hid nothing.

  She touched the cap gingerly. Suddenly she flung it off. She quickly untied the braids, pulled them down and unbound them. She took a comb from her trouser pocket and brushed out her hair until it hung loosely down to her waist. She thought of replaiting it into one braid in the comfortable Sylvan style. But she wasn’t Sylvan any more than she was human. She was only herself, part of both, and perhaps that meant being neither.

  As satisfied as she was ever going to be with her appearance she stuffed the comb back into her pocket and glanced around the room once more.

  She felt lonelier than she had ever felt during a lifetime of loneliness. It was not just that she was leaving Carlton—and in spite of everything that was not easy—but rather it was that she’d grown used to Fletcher, Rusty, and Rowen’s company. She fit in with them in a way that made her almost sorry she’d ever known them at all, for having known their friendship her loneliness was far harder to bear.

  Struggling not to think about Rowen and the others, she headed for the stable.

  The servants had left her gear in a heap near the stable door.

  Leah surveyed the stock and chose two big geldings, one a bay, the other a brown. Although both belonged to her brother, she felt sure that he would not mind her taking them if it meant that she were leaving for good. She thought of using two of the Sylvan horses instead, but they were really overlarge even for her.

  She saddled the bay and put a pack carrier on the brown. Then she began loading her belongings. “Leah!”

  She looked up to see Michael Rowen striding toward her. His left arm was still in a sling, but he’d drunk enough tomaad to ensure that it would heal rapidly.