by Robert Beers
* * * *
Adam readjusted the sack full of apples in his arms as he climbed the stairs to the floor where he and Milward stayed. The apples had been a good find. Their green striped, reddish skins hid a solid white sweet flesh with a nice, tart aftertaste.
“Hey, old man.” He called out as he nudged the door to Milward's room with the toe of his boot. “I've got some apples here you'll want to ... Milward!”
Adam dropped the apples and rushed to the old wizard's side. Milward was bathed in sweat and his teeth were chattering. His skin held the color of the grave and each shuddering breath came past his lips in an agonized groan.
“Milward!” Adam tried to get the wizard's attention. “What can I do?”
Milward's eyes shifted to Adam's face for a brief instant and then they began to roll back as his breathing slowed.
“No!” Adam took hold of the old Wizard's shoulders and shook him. “Stay with me, old man. I won't let you die! I won't!”
The shaping surged out of him as if it had a mind of it's own, and enveloped Milward in a nimbus of crackling gold and blue light. Adam could feel himself weakening as the energy was drained from him.
Suddenly, with a crack of thunder, the nimbus left Milward's body, and shot out of the room through the ceiling. The only trace of its passing was the fading thunder.
“Adam.” The old wizard looked up into his young apprentice's worried eyes. “Why are you holding my shoulders like that? I would have woken eventually.”
The look on Adam's face got to him. “What happened, lad? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Adam didn't know where to begin. He started and stopped his explanation a couple of times before he spoke. “Well, uh ... I came in here with some fresh apples for you. You were having some kind of seizure ... You started to die, and then this ... shaping ... comes from out of nowhere. It turns you into a glowing mummy, starts draining me of power, and then ... it leaves!
“You wake up and act as if nothing happened. Look at you. You look better than you did when we left Dragonglade.”
Milward didn't hear the last few words of Adam's rehash. A verse from the prophecy of Labad came flooding into his mind. “Through his power the destroyer is born...”
“It begins,” he said, half to himself.
“It begins?” Adam echoed. “What begins?”
* * * *
The Seeker found the object of its interest in the street below it. The mind held twists within that took different paths from the other tiny minds around it. It stood before a creature of power. The Seeker was brushed by part of that power as it dipped low in the air, considering how to join with the one it desired. The taste of it was delicious.
* * * *
McCabe was wondering what to do with this female who gave him such interesting sensations, when she and her dog were struck by a writhing mass of golden light intertwined with blue lightening.
The power of the shaping obliterated the envoy and her mount, expelling an eruption of life energy that tore into McCabe, knocking him to the ground.
The people that came to their doors and windows to see what was happening misunderstood the screams coming from the little fellow dressed all in black, they weren't of pain, they were of ecstasy. Wave upon wave of pleasure overcame him as the life of the envoy and her great dog flooded every fiber of his being.
* * * *
The Seeker chose its moment and meshed its essence with that of the shaping, as it flowed into McCabe, and mixed its being with his. The wash of sensation overwhelmed it, and it used McCabe's voice as its own to scream out its entrance into the world of men.
Grisham heard screams echo across the city, screams given voice by lungs no longer merely human. Housewives pulled their window shutters closed, and ordinarily fearless men looked to the skies to find the source of their sudden apprehension.
The being that used to be McCabe lay on the cobblestones, the after-euphoria nearly as overwhelming as the beginning. Townsfolk watching him from their doorsteps refused to venture any closer. That decision saved their lives.
* * * *
The mists of the scrying swirled and pulsed with mixing colors, but they wouldn't clear.
“Nnnnggghhhh!” Gilgafed strained his power to its limits in an effort to break through the mists to his envoy in Grisham. Sweat broke out upon his brow, and his fingernails bit into his palms, drawing blood.
“Master. Please. Your hands, they're bleeding,” Cobain pleaded with the sorcerer from his place against the wall.
“Aaagghh!” He broke the scry with an abrupt wave of his hand across the face of the glass.
“Why won't they clear?” The question was not directed toward his servant.
“Could it be the mirror itself, Master?” Cobain tried to staunch the blood dripping from the Sorcerer's palms.
“Of course not. Get away from me, fool!” Gilgafed thrust his servant back against the wall of the chamber.
He wiped one bloody palm against the other as he paced back and forth in front of the glass hung on the wall. “This is a piece of silvered glass, nothing more. Scrying comes from here.” He slapped his chest with his hand, twice.
“Something is happening out there.” He pointed in the direction of Grisham. “Something involving that little bitch of a sorceress. Could it be... IT?”
Cobain blanched. “You mean the ... Seeker?”
“Don't mention it by name!” Gilgafed whirled to face his servant. “Do you want to bring it back here!?”
Cobain cringed back against the wall. “Master! No!”
Gilgafed dismissed his servant's fear with a wave of his hand. “Oh, hold your water. One brief speaking won't bring it, just don't do it again.”
He turned again to face the mirror. “What is going on down there?”
* * * *
“What was that?” Duke Bilardi turned his head at the sound that disturbed his morning meal.
“Sounded like screaming, Milord.” The liveried servant craned his neck to peer out the tower window.
“Oh.” The Duke's fork paused in its journey to his mouth. The morsel of rare sweetmeat glistened on the tines. “Close the shutters, will you?” The fork resumed its journey.
* * * *
The librarian's finger stopped at the word “known,” as something from outside disturbed his reading. He marked the position in his memory, and put the parchment down long enough to light another candle. There was something he was supposed to do...
Felsten pushed open the door to the reading chamber with his backside, and entered, carrying a silver tray loaded down with breakfast and a pitcher of steaming tisane.
He set the tray down next to the librarian's desk, and began pouring a mug full of the beverage. “Will you have some, master?”
The librarian looked up at Felsten, and then at the tray as if suddenly remembering what time of day it was. “What? Oh, oh yes, certainly, Felsten. Thank you.”
* * * *
The howls woke Drinaugh from a dream about flying. It was not one of the nice ones. He was trying to escape a darkness that flowed over the landscape like burnt treacle, and it kept grabbing his tail and slowing his flight. The waking was almost a relief by comparison.
“Huh? Wha...? What's all the noise about?” In his groggy state, he failed to ask the question in wolf, and he also stood up, exposing himself to the sleeping girl on the other side of the large boulder that separated them.
* * * *
Thaylli woke to wolves howling. Her dreams had not been much nicer than what she woke to. Dark, gibbering things, had been chasing her, and no matter how hard she tried, she only moved as if she were stuck in molasses, and the things kept coming closer and closer.
She sat up with a start and looked around her, half expecting to see the things surrounding her in her bedroll, but all she saw was the mist laying heavily over the lowlands below, and the pale ribbon of Labad's highway glinting where the morning sun struck it.
She ro
se to begin gathering her things, when the howls came again. She whirled to face the sound, and found herself confronted with the bulk of Drinaugh. He was only half grown as dragons go, but to a mountain girl who's never fully believed in their existence, he was more than large enough.
A small squeak escaped through her half-open lips and then she fainted dead away.
Chapter Thirty
“How long has she been dead?” Nikkas, brother to the Ortian Emperor, Ambassador to Grisham, and father of the dead girl, put the question to the ranking sergeant of his guards.
Hypatia's body lay where McCabe had left it, sprawled across the four-poster bed with her crushed neck at an unnatural angle, and the Duke of Grisham's greeting card sewn into her belly. The smell was what had finally brought someone into the room prior to the regular biweekly check. The chambermaid who alerted the guards was still in hysterics and being tended to by the cook.
“By the smell, Lord Nikkas, four ... maybe five days.” The Sergeant gave no outward sign of being affected by the sight of the body or the smell. His short-cropped gray hair, broken nose and the fine tracery of old scars where his skin showed, told those with the experience to read the signs, that he'd seen deaths like this, and worse, before.
“I want whoever is responsible for this, Sergeant. Remove that flicking card, now!” The Ambassador spoke through clenched teeth. He'd known his eldest daughter was bored to tears with Grisham's lack of sophistication, and he suspected she may have been venturing into promiscuity as a result. This ... tragedy was partially due to his inattention.
The need for revenge filled him with a fury only blood would wash away. He held the calling card between thumb and forefinger. “Duke Bilardi, eh?”
He spun on his heel and stalked from the room. The sergeant followed him, to his right side and a pace behind. “Use your best men, Sergeant. Find out for me if Bilardi is truly behind this. Knowing the man, I wouldn't be surprised if he were. If he is, there won't be a stone in this city left standing, and the only thing living in Grisham will be the rats.”
* * * *
“Sire! Sire! Sire!” Alford turned in his feeding of the birds to see his aide, Cremer, rush into the aviary waving a roll of starched silk. The birds exploded into a white and pink cloud of feathers that dispersed into the branches of the trees overhead. Several of them voiced their displeasure at the interruption, and a number of them showed their opinion of Cremer by targeting him as their garderobe.
Cremer slid to a stop in front of his Emperor and stood there, covered in bird droppings and panting. Obviously the man had run all the way from the message loft where the homing pigeons landed.
Alford reached out and wiped a smear of dropping off of his aide's cheek. “Cremer,” he clicked his tongue in mild reproof. “What is the meaning for all this? You've quite literally scared the crap out of my birds, and you look totally blown, as well. Sit down, man, before you do yourself an injury.”
Cremer held the roll of silk out to Alford. “Please, My Lord.”
The Emperor looked at the roll of silk underneath his nose. “Really, Cremer. What's this all about?” Then he noticed the color of the roll, black with a red seal. The seal was broken. Of course, Cremer read it before bringing it to him as he always did. Something terrible had happened. Something involving the royal family.
He unrolled the silk. The white lead ink glared against the black sheen of the silk.
As Alford read the nine terse lines written by his brother, the blood drained from his face. He looked up at Cremer, and death was in his eyes.
“Is this thing so? Could this have happened?”
Cremer didn't answer, but the bleakness in his eyes told Alford what his aide believed.
“I ... see...” The silk missive crumpled as the Emperor's hand clenched into a fist.
Without another word he spun and ran out of the aviary, startling the birds that had resettled to feed. Cremer heard him calling for the seer the empire employed. He sighed. He'd already spoken to the enchanter. War was in the wind.
* * * *
Thaylli woke from a horrible dream. She'd been dreaming about being surrounded by howling wolves and being chased by a dragon. The dragon had been the worst.
She rubbed her eyes as she sat up. The air smelled queer, in a musky animal sort of way. She finished rubbing, and opened her eyes to see herself ringed by gray and black muzzles.
Her scream startled the wolves into backing away from her, and then she looked up from them directly into the concerned features of Drinaugh, the dragon.
Thaylli screamed one more time, and then fainted, again.
The Alpha Wolf stepped forward and sniffed her. He snorted and backed away again, settling down onto his haunches. “Why would our friend bright eye choose this one for a mate? She makes too much noise, and she is more timid than a newborn cub.”
His mate moved up beside him, and looked at Thaylli as she swooned on the grass before them. “Perhaps it is because she is a good breeder.”
Her mate looked at her. “How can one tell without seeing her cubs?”
“That is for him to decide, is it not?” She replied levelly.
Drinaugh leaned over the wolves and sniffed Thaylli carefully. She wasn't injured, as far as he could tell. Nothing in her scent gave any indication of her being in ill health, but there was something...
He straightened and declared to the wolves. “It appears that is a question our friend still has to have answered. They've not mated yet. She is a virgin.”
The female wolf looked at Thaylli's still form and licked her cheek. “The poor thing.”
* * * *
“Are you sure you're all right?” Adam watched Milward, as the old wizard fussed over the things he was packing to take to the library.
“Of course I am. Don't hover. You're acting like I'm a child, and I haven't been one of those for nearly twelve centuries.”
Adam hung his head for a moment, but he didn't uncross his arms. “I'm sorry. It's just that I'm worried. You almost died. If that shaping hadn't come out of me...”
“Then I'd be dead.” Milward snapped. “And you wouldn't have...” He cut off what he was going to say. There wasn't proof yet that that part of the prophecy had come to pass. Maybe Adam wasn't the he it spoke about, but he had very little hope of that being the case.
“I wouldn't have what?” Adam dropped his hands to his hips, his left resting on the pommel of the sword's hilt.
“Never mind that.” Milward secured the straps on the small pack he'd purchased for the trip across the straight to the library. “I'm all packed; let's get going; it's a good long walk to the docks.”
Granny Bullton met them at the foot of the stairs and fussed over Milward, much to his dismay.
“Och, you poor old man. How're you doin', me dear? Are ye recovering’ from yer spell ok? I've a nice drop of ale brewing for ye, sweetened with honey. You just let me know, an’ I'll have it drawn for ye in a flash.”
Milward tried vainly to disentangle himself from her concerned hands. “Old woman! Leave me be! I'm doing just fine, thank you. I appreciate your concern, but I'd be much more thankful if you'd attend to your brewing, and let me tend to me.”
Adam stepped between Milward and Granny Bullton before Milward's bad temper ruined their chances of being welcomed back at the inn. “We really are thankful for everything you've done for us, Granny, but we've got to rush to a very important meeting across the straight.”
Her eyes went wide. “The library? Oh, my goodness. I didn't know I had Lord's stayin’ here.” She attempted a clumsy curtsy.
Adam stopped the gesture in midst. “We're not lord's, Granny. And I'd appreciate you not spreading anything like that around, ok?”
He released her and she bobbed her head in a series of quick bows. “Yes, milord. Thank you, milord. I will, milord.”
“Now you've done it!” Milward hissed at Adam, as they made their way out of the Inn and into the busy morning street. “That ol
d biddy is going to spread all over Grisham she's got a young Lord and his grandfather staying with her. We'll be swamped with retainers and invitations, not to mention the huge target Grisham's female gentry are going to paste on you, my boy. I hope you're prepared to explain that to Thaylli.”
Inwardly, Adam blanched. He hadn't thought of Thaylli, not for a number of days. Things had just been so busy lately. With Milward's reminder, her face and voice came flooding into his memory, along with the sweet fragrance that seemed to follow her everywhere.
His smile at the old wizard was less than genuine, “Oh, I'm sure she'll keep her word. You heard her say she'd wouldn't spread that sort of thing around, didn't you?”
Milward grimaced. “Oh, of course,” he said sarcastically. “I'm sure gossiping is the last thing on her mind. Mind the oxen, they're leaving a reminder behind.”
Adam stepped to the side of a merchant's cart where the draft animals, their tails cocked, were doing what oxen do.
Due to the hilly nature of Grisham's demesne, Adam and Milward's path to the docks was a circuitous one. Milward's knowledge of some of the seedier parts of the city state was nearly encyclopedic, and he kept up a running commentary on the history of the neighborhoods, shop enclaves, and the several red lantern districts that ringed the outer perimeter of the city, just inside the yards-thick wall.
The wharf and its environs began their northward run approximately a half-mile inside the mouth of the straight, and continued along the Grisham side for over twelve miles. Its collection of piers, docks, ship builders, warehouses, fisheries competed with the ubiquitous taverns and pubs that catered to the men, and women, that came off the ships for space on the crowded wharf.
The dock Milward was headed to lay near the far southern end of the wharf, and slightly apart from the rest. Three covered piers extended over the turgid waters of the straight. Each of them housed a moderately-sized sailboat. Two of the boats were secured to the pier with oiled ropes, and their sails tightly furled. Three old men, two of them smoking pipes of weed, were sitting in the third. They appeared to be deep in conversation over some matter. One of them gestured with his pipe as he spoke.