“Boy,” Gadar whispered, “if there were another way-” But there was no other way. Any other
way had been lost to him the first time he'd set his foot on this dark path. What was one
more life now balanced against the many he had taken and the one he must preserve at the
price of even his own soul? There was no profit, and only dangerous distraction, in regret.
Gadar crossed the chamber, stopped at a large table, and checked the components of the
spell that he would work tonight. Everything was ready: the wormwood, the powdered dust of
a crushed sapphire, the rosemary sprigs, the dark heart s blood of a breeding doe.
Gadar had no intention of trapping the spirit of his chosen victim in any temporal prison,
and this was the difficult part of the spell. Were he to simply thrust the spirit of the
young man into an en-mazed prison, he would not achieve his purpose. He had a better use
for his victim's life.
For that reason he had chosen the stocky young man with the thick chestnut hair. Daryn,
his name was, and he seemed strong enough to provide the life essence the mage needed.
At least until he could find someone stronger.
The mage paused, glanced again at the lightening sky. It might be, he thought, testing a
new idea, that it was not such a bad thing that his ghostly assassins had failed in their
dark charge. It might be that, were he to let the intruders find him, he would be well
rewarded. There was no use for the persistent girl or the old dwarf. But a half-elf, young
and strong as this one, would give life for many, many more years than the pathetic young
humans he'd been using till now.
“Yes,” he whispered, running his fingers along the edge of the table, “and peace, for a
time, at least, and a rest from this weary work.”
He could not send his phantoms for the half-elf now. Not with the sun's bright light
shining. But the half-elf would come on his own. Gadar smiled coldly. That persistent girl
would see to it. He would let them find him then. He would put no more obstacles in their
way than he needed to gain the time to work this spell now.
Daryn's young life would buy him the time he needed. And time was, after all, the purchase
he'd always sought to make.
The forest had darkened long before the sun set. The whisperings of the night before
became ominous growlings in the underbrush, sobbing wails in the boughs of the trees. A
wild wind danced. The little party of three moved upward, carefully picking a barely seen
path through the giant pines. They were touched by a chill that put Tanis in mind of
winter.
That morning, in grim jest, Flint had suggested that if they simply let the forest's evil
feel guide them, they'd no doubt come upon their ghostly attackers.
Tanis had not taken the suggestion seriously until, moving
north for lack of any better direction, they each began to feel the same nameless dread.
“Like a foul odor, a clammy touch,” Riana had whispered. Her hands, clenched in
white-knuckled fists at her sides, trembled when she spoke. Some fearful thing seemed to
hover just beyond their sight, breathing in the trees like no wind that Tanis had ever
heard before. It groaned piteously, and wept with winter's dying sign.
Shivering in the raw wind, Tanis nodded to Flint. “We could follow this feeling like a
well-marked road.”
“Aye, well we could,” Flint said, running his thumb along the haft of his axe. “But what
would we find? Nothing we'd like to, I'll guess.” The memory of the phantoms sent more
chill through him than the real wind stinging his face now.
The faint path broadened for a while, a rocky trail barren even of dirt, leading them ever
upward. It seemed, at times, that the wind's voice really was the wail of dead things
keening for life's loss. The trees, naked and stunted, warped as though by some de mented
hand, were only ugly growths clinging to life by the whim of cruel nature. Then, when no
thing grew at all, when the forests had been left far behind and their breath was coming
hard and fast in the bit- ter, thinning air, the path narrowed again, fading to a pass
between high peaks. It vanished suddenly at the top of a boulder-strewn cliff. Behind them
lay the dark forest, before them, and far below, a narrow vale.
Riana, shivering and exhausted, took the last few yards of the pass with Tanis's help. But
the steely determination that had brought her this far still glimmered in her eyes. SHE'S
GOT MORE HEART THAN STRENGTH, Tanis thought.
“We'll rest here a moment, Riana. We all need it.”
She nodded dumbly, too tired to speak, and sank to a seat on an ice-kissed boulder. Tanis
eyed her doubtfully for a moment, then went to join Flint at the cliff's edge.
“She's not going to be able to go much farther, Tanis. The girl's exhausted.”
“I know. And she isn't the only one. You've been quiet these few hours, Flint. How are
you?”
Flint blew on fingers that were stiff and achingly cold. “My bones are freezing. I suppose
this is what comes of listening to the wild stories of pretty young women who lose their
brothers and lovers in the forest?”
“Lover? Who, Karel? What makes you say that?” Flint snorted and shook his head. "Anyone
who's heard her
story can tell that. Though its likely news to her, too. She's doubtless devoted to her
brother, but it's been this young Karel we've heard about time and again, hasn't it? Young
girls don't generally blush quite so deeply when they are talking about family friends."
“Flint, you surprise me.”
“Why, because I can use my eyes? I'm not so old as all that, youngster. But that's not
what concerns me now. What I want to know is where in the Abyss we are.”
Tanis looked down into the valley, a deep cleft in the mountains shrouded in a thick mist.
“I think we're about where we set out to be. Look.” He pointed to a cleared patch in the
mist far below.
Black, built from the heart and bone of the mountains, a vast, turreted castle rose, a
jagged skeletal finger. The setting sun was a fiery wound in the brittle blue sky,
bleeding light across the forbidding dark stone. Around them the sobbing wind mourned and
gibbered.
“Can you feel it, Flint?”
The sense of evil that had been their guide to this place seemed to boil and rumble in the
vale below as though this were the source of the keening winds and icy fear.
“Aye, I can feel it. And I don't much like it.” The dwarf glanced over his shoulder at
Riana, who sat hunched and shivering, her eyes on the frozen rocks at her feet. “Tanis, I
could well believe that those ghosts came from this vale.” He looked out into the valley
again and felt the touch of something colder than the bitter wind brush up against his
soul. “And I think, too, that something knows we're here.”
Were he not so tired, Tanis would have smiled. He'd known the hard-headed old dwarf too
many years not to be surprised by the fanciful turn of his thoughts. He looked closely at
his old friend. What he saw in Flint's eyes made him shiver. It was sure knowledge that
made Flint say what he had. Though the wry twist of his smile told Tanis that he'd no idea
where the knowledge came from.
“Just a feeling,” the dwarf muttered.
“I think you're right. And I think, too, that whatever knows we're here will not let us
turn back now. It will be dark soon, and none of us is up to a trip down to that castle at
night. We'd best be going.”
"Aye, well, consider this, Tanis: when they attacked her camp, those phantom raiders
seemed to have little interest in Riana. It
was only Daryn and Karel they ghosted away. And there is something that tells me, too,
that they will have small enough interest in an old dwarf."
Tanis did smile then. “Are you claiming to have The Sight, Flint?”
“No. I'm remembering her story.”
He remembered it all the way down to the valley. Though it should not have been beyond his
skill to find the thin, shale path, Flint, a hill dwarf who'd spent many years in the
Kharolis Mountains, thought the trail came too easily to hand. He would not have sworn his
oath that it had not been there before. Still, it had the look of a thing misplaced.
“Like it hasn't been here long,” he grumbled to Tanis. “But it looks old.”
“And it's the next best thing to vertical,” Tanis said, catching hold of Riana, who slid
on the loose shale. “The sooner we're off it, the safer our necks will be.”
Flint had his doubts. And from the look of barely controlled fear in her eyes, he thought
Riana shared them. Still, she righted herself with the same hard-eyed purpose that had
brought her this far. Flint felt a new and grudging respect for her. He reached back and
took her hand.
“This way, Riana. And have a care, the shale gets looser and smaller. I've no wish to
tumble down the rest of the path.”
“Riana?” RIANA . . . RIANA . . . RIANA . . . Karel's whisper echoed in his mind with all
the force of thunder crashing overhead. The flags of the stone floor were hard as
midwinter's ice beneath his cheek. His leather jerkin was no protection against the chill
draft wandering across the floor.
“Daryn?”
Slowly he became aware that he was alone. No chain held him, no manacle bound him to this
floor. Still, he was unable to move even a finger. And Riana and Daryn were gone.
Alone! But where? Though he struggled hard with reluctant memory, Karel could not fill in
the gap between the icy grasp of the disembodied warrior who'd touched his hand-how long
ago? a day? two?-and the chill of this stone floor now. Yet some time had passed. He could
see Lunitari riding dark clouds just beyond the window above his head. When he'd last seen
the crimson moon she'd been still waning. Now she waxed, though only slightly.
Where was he?
“Where are you?”
Fear raced through Karel then, but so firmly held was he that he could not move. The voice
was old but hard and touched with deadly power. Like the whisper of a ghost, he heard an
aching answer.
“Here, within your reach.” “Give me your true name.” “Daryn, Teorth's son.” Though it was
his friend's voice that answered the
formally posed question, Karel barely recognized it. Dull, will-bereft, it held none of
the steady confidence he knew as Daryn's. He trembled inwardly, nauseated by the
realization that it was not Daryn's will that made his friend answer, but someone else's.
Somewhere, out of his sight, Karel heard the snap and sign of a fire. The bitter scent of
burning wormwood tainted the cool air.
“Hear me, Daryn, Teorth's son.”
Karel squeezed his eyes shut as that commanding voice dropped to a secret, murmuring
chant. He felt the stone floor start to hum and vibrate. Magic!
Tension, so thick and real that he might have been able to reach out and touch it, filled
the very air of the chamber. Leaping flames cast black shadow and lurid light through the
room. The tension of the magic's power burst and filled the chamber with the dancing
rainbows of light.
Daryn moaned. The sound came from deep within his heart, winding and writhing, and touched
Karel's soul with dread. He struggled against his invisible bonds. His muscles shrieked
with the effort, his head filled to bursting with pain. The sweat of his effort stung his
eyes, splintered the shimmering rainbows of magic's light into shards of furious color.
“Daryn!” he gasped. But Daryn did not respond. He could not.
In a bloody circle, stunned with magic, dazed by his own horrified realization that Gadar
clutched his soul, Daryn screamed.
Though Tanis scouted carefully once they'd crossed the scree and entered the little
valley, he found no sign that the black castle was guarded. But even as he returned to his
companions, darkness, thick and black as a mourner's cloak, fell with startling suddenness.
Riana gasped, but Flint only shook his head as though to say that he expected something of
the sort. "Night's dark is never this
heavy," he muttered. He saw his companions as faint reddish outlines in the unrelieved
blackness. Tanis, too, would be able to see. But he knew that Riana, with only her human
night vision, weak by the standards of dwarves and elves, must be nearly sightless.
“Tanis, give her a minute,” he whispered. To Riana he said, “Close your eyes for a moment,
then see if you can't get yourself adjusted to this darkness.”
She did, bowing her head in concentration. But when she opened her eyes again she only
shook her head.
“It's like being blind!”
“Aye,” Flint agreed, “and likely that's how you're meant to feel.” He took her hand and
guided it to his shoulder. “Get your bearings, girl. Tanis, what did you find out there?”
“Nothing much. There is a postern gate around the north side. We can make for that. The
main entry is unguarded, but I'd like to make as quiet an entrance as we can. Let's head
for that postern.”
“I'll not argue. Lead on then.”
The path Tanis led them along was narrow and rocky, curving around the north side of the
valley and down through a small decline to a tall, slim tower thrusting up from the main
keep. Staying close to the black wall of the tower, Tanis crept slowly toward the
weathered wooden door where he waited for Flint and Riana, still clinging to the old
dwarf's shoulder, to join him.
The door opened immediately onto a tall flight of dark slippery stairs. Cracked and
shattered by age, they were dangerous with sickly gray moss and only wide enough for one
to walk.
“Be careful,” he whispered. He waited until Riana was between him and Flint, then took the
first steps carefully. So dark was the tower that they could make their way up only by
slow, cautious steps. Silent as shadows they crept up and up until Flint was certain that
the stairs must end on the mountain peaks.
And then, after an endless time of searching blindly for step after step, groping along
crumbling stone walls for balance, Flint heard Tanis whisper back that the stairs ended in
a corridor.