Light leaked into a high-ceilinged hallway from an intersection several hundred feet to
the west. In the barely relieved darkness Flint saw Tanis reach for Riana's hand and help
her up the last few steps.
Drawing a long slow breath, glad to be off the treacherous stairs, Flint reached behind
him to adjust the balance of his axe, then stepped into the corridor. The dark stone walls
wept with moisture, the floor beneath his feet was slick with green-scummed
puddles. It was then he realized that a wind was moaning where no
wind should be. And beneath that moaning he heard voices, cold and gibbering.
“Tanis, I don't like this.”
Riana turned, fearful questions in her eyes, her hand slipping away from Tanis's grip.
Shadows leaped and danced around them as though cast there by a torch in a mad dancer's
hand. Like bats smoked from a cave, the hollow, heartless voices of the dead swept round
the high vaulted ceiling. The corridor filled with a tomb's chill.
Thickening suddenly, the shadows swirled to form into something black and vaguely manlike.
Before Flint could move or even shout a warning, a dark spectre reached to touch his
friend, freezing him to stillness with its grasp. Horrified, he saw Tanis, his eyes
suddenly still and glazed, his face like a carved death mask, turn.
Flint leaped, diving for Tanis, thinking to pull him away from the deadly hold of the
black ghost. But, fast as he moved, he was too late. He felt for a moment the hard, real
warmth of Tanis's arm beneath his hand. Then he felt nothing.
“No!” he howled, hitting out at the clammy stone wall in his fear and anger. “Tanis!” But
Tanis was gone, vanished as though he had never been there. “No!” Flint struck the wall
again, not feeling the sharp sting of stone tearing at his knuckles. “Tanis! Damn! Where
are you!”
He would have hit the wall again in fury and an almost blind need to feel something solid
and real, but a slim hand grasped his wrist, pulling his fist down.
“No, please stop!” Riana cried, “Flint, stop.” Flint rounded on the girl, his eyes
flashing dangerously. “Where is he?” "He's gone-they took him, the way they took Ka-rel and
Daryn. I don't know where he is!" Voices whispered beneath the screams that filled the
air, telling
of torture and shattering agony. Gone, Flint thought furiously, holding onto his anger to
warm the ice of fear from his blood. Gone! And left me here, damn it!
Down the corridor, toward where the gray light straggled in from some unknown source, he
saw a dead torch in an old cresset. Flint ran for it, found another, and snatched them
both up. Working quickly, he lighted both and shoved one into Riana's hands.
“Hang onto this,” he growled, “and don't let it go out. Whatever these demons are, they do
their filthy work in the dark. Aye, they had no love for our campfire: they'll keep their
distance from our torches. We're going to look for Tanis. And I've no doubt that where we
find him we'll find your brother and his friend.”
Riana grasped her torch with both hands, to steady it. In the careening shadows Flint's
eyes were hard and frightening. “How- how will we find him?”
Flint shifted his own torch to his left hand and hefted his battle-axe in his right.
“We'll find him,” he growled. “Have no doubt about that, girl. We'll find him.” AND WHEN I
DO, he thought, still fanning his anger against his fear, HE'LL BE LUCKY IF I DON'T KICK
HIM FROM HERE TO SOLACE FORGETTING ME INTO THIS NIGHTMARE!
When they began to find the first bodies, Flint's fury turned to hollow fear. Riana,
weeping openly now, stood rooted in the corridor, staring at the lifeless husks that had
once been the strong bodies of young men. None of the bodies, some mouldering still, some
whitened skeletons bleached by time's passage, showed the marks of a fight: no broken
bones, no shattered skulls. Not one of them had battled his way to death.
They littered the corridor like discarded toys, used, broken, and cast aside.
Steeling himself to find what he knew he would not be able to bear to see, Flint moved
carefully among them, searching. His blood pounded painfully in his head, his breathing
was ragged, whispered fragments of prayers to gods few people acknowledge. Slowly, almost
gently at times, he toed over one corpse after another, his hands locked in a death-hold
on his axe. But none of the bodies was Tanis, and the most recently dead were still too
long gone to have been either Karel or Daryn.
Breathing hard with his relief, he went back to Riana, took her hands in his own, and led
her past the dead.
“No, there is no use struggling. You cannot move.” Despite his own warning, Karel
instinctively tried to reach a hand to the stranger. He grimaced and whispered again,
“Don't try, you'll waste your strength. And you'll need it.”
The words echoed in Tanis's head, bounding and leaping so that he could barely make sense
of them. Where was he? He remembered, with heart-stopping clarity, the touch of hard, cold
fingers on his wrist, the grip of a skeletal hand, and a groaning, beckoning voice urging
him to follow. And he'd followed, incap-
able of refusal. Then darkness, bitter as dead hope, covered him, filling him with dread
and piercing fear.
Flint? Riana? With a dark and hopeless feeling he recalled Flint's words on the cliff:
THOSE PHANTOM RAIDERS SEEMED TO HAVE LITTLE INTEREST IN RIANA . . . THEY WILL HAVE SMALL
ENOUGH INTEREST IN AN OLD DWARF. Where are Riana and Flint? Dead? Dead. He heard his own
groan of fear and knew, then, that he could speak.
“Who is that? Where are you?”
“Here, beside you.” Karel's whispered laugh was sour. “If you could turn your head, you'd
see me. As it is, you'll have to be content to stare at the ceiling, friend. Wait until
he's deep into the spell again. Then try to move.”
Light, splitting and dancing in all the colors of a rainbow, leaped before Tanis's eyes,
arcing and splashing across the field of his vision. He squeezed his eyes closed, trying
to shut out the needle-sharp pain. “Who are you?”
“Karel. Hush!”
“Daryn.” The mage's word was thunder, rolling across the chamber, filling the air with
danger. “Rise!”
Beside him, Tanis heard Karel gasp. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to move. The
effort should have taken him to his feet. He was only able to turn onto his side. It was
enough to allow him to see the whole chamber, and enough to let him shudder with horror at
what he saw.
It was a small man who spoke those commands, and very old. He wore his years with little
grace. They lay upon him like unholy burdens. His eyes blazed with his magic, his red
robes swirled about him as he lifted his hand.
Crimson blood circled a weakly struggling young man. Daryn, Tanis thought, Riana's
brother! The soft murmuring of the mage's chant rose and fell in tones that were sometimes
coaxing, sometimes commanding.
Then, with jerky, heartless strength, Daryn staggered to his feet. His hands twitched, his
legs threatened to buckle, then stiffened as his feet found their purchase upon the stone
floor. Dried rosemary leaves rustled in the mage's hand. The fire in the brazier sighed.
With a practiced flourish, he sent the dust of a powdered sapphire, blue and sparkling as
a high autumn sky, leaping across the distance between him and the bloody circle. It
paused in mid-air, an azure halo above Daryn's head, then settled gently, with great
precision, inside the blood circle, to form an- other border.
Imprisoned within Gadar's circles of magic, Daryn stood, his face drawn and white. In that
moment, complete understanding rippled through him, carving at his face with the sharp
tools of terror.
And in that moment, the door that Tanis could barely see across the wide chamber burst
open with a splintering crash. Weird light broke along the finely honed blade of Flint's
axe, leaping and dancing.
Karel's sob of fear when he saw Riana standing behind Flint might have been the voice of
Daryn, standing mute and terrified in double circles of enchantment. Or it might have been
the voice of Tanis's own dread. Gadar spun quickly, his eyes wild and filled with hatred
and thwarted purpose. White light leaped from his fingers, deadly arrows of flame.
“Flint! Down!”
But Tanis's cry wasn't needed to send the old dwarf dodging and scrambling for cover,
dragging Riana with him. Karel slapped his leg hard and shouted,
“Now! Up, friend, we can move!”
The mage screamed, a mountain cat's howl of rage, and turned on Tanis and Karel. Halfway
to his feet, Tanis dropped again to the stone floor. White-hot arrows of light darted past
his face, stinging and burning, filling the air with a sulphurous, acrid stink. Out of the
corner of his eye, Tanis saw Karel bolt across the chamber to where Daryn hung, trapped,
in the enchanted circle of blood.
Daryn moaned, and Karel, crouched outside the bloody circle, reached out his hand to his
friend. He cried out in pain, flung back by the spitting, stinging force of Gadar's magic.
Riana screamed, and Tanis leaped for the mage, caught him around the knees and brought him
crash-ihg to the floor. From some hidden place in his sleeve, Gadar found a knife. Its
cold blade flashed once, then again in the dancing torchlight, raking along the back of
Tanis's hand.
Hardly feeling the pain, Tanis flipped the mage onto his belly and dashed his knife hand
against the floor. The steel blade hit stone and rang loudly. Tanis jerked first one hand,
then the other tightly behind the mage's back and held him firmly with a knee in the small
of his back.
Frightened, filled with terror and despair, Riana's moaning sobs came to the half-elf. A
bitter oath in dwarven told him that Flint was unharmed.
“Let Daryn go, mage,” Tanis ordered tightly. “It's over. Let him go.”
Shuddering and gasping for breath, Gadar twisted his head to glare at his captor. His
voice, as hard as ice and steel, was a grating snarl. “It is not over until the
spell-caster declares it over. And do not think to try to free him from the magic's
circle. Whoever crosses its borders now will not live an instant.”
“There is no reason to hold him now. Let him go.”
“No reason in your eyes, reason enough in mine.” Gadar coughed and shuddered. For a moment
Tanis thought he saw the old man's eyes dim, the black glitter of hatred awash with grief.
“But even that may be gone now, vanished at last, despite all I have done.” Grim purpose
darkened the mage's face again. “No! I will fight to the end! Fight as I have always
fought!”
Knowing that he must strike before Gadar could begin to work his magic, Tanis raised his
fist. But Gadar was an old man! And tired, by the look of him. OLD AND WEARY, a dry,
cracked voice whispered in his mind, AND IT WILL TAKE ONLY ONE BLOW, YOUNG MAN, ONLY ONE
IF YOU CHOOSE TO DEAL IT OUT AGAINST SO FRAGILE AN OPPONENT. WHAT STRENGTH HAVE I AGAINST
THE HARD HAND OF YOUR YOUTH? Weary age, ancient burdened grief filled the voice, and
blurred images of pitiful but valiant striving coalesced into pictures in the half-elf's
mind, as clear as though they were his living memories. In the wavering torchlight the
shadow of his own fist seemed a black and evil thing. HE IS AN OLD MAN!
Tanis relaxed his hold on the mage and started to release him. Then, as he turned his
head, shamed by the thought of striking so helpless an opponent, he saw Gadar's lips move
slowly, silently chanting the words of a deadly spell. His black eyes glittered like those
of an ancient snake coiled to strike.
It took only one blow to still the mage. But as magic's rainbow light surged to life
again, pulsing and throbbing in the air, Tanis knew he'd struck too late.
Karel hunched his shoulders, his head bowed intending to butt through the wall of Gadar's
power.
“No!” Riana screamed.
“Karel!” It was not Riana who cried out then, but Daryn. Something of himself flickered in
his eyes. He reached out his hand as though he would stop Karel where he crouched, ready
to leap through the blood-etched circle. Daryn's eyes were black with fear, then finally,
free of the puppet-master's influence of the mage's will, understanding. At last his own
will animated his limbs. He staggered toward Karel, crashed into the pulsing wall of
magic, and thrust his hand into the free air of the chamber.
“No, Karel!” His voice was hollow, echoing already with the abandoned agony of the
phantoms who haunted the castle.
The chamber shrieked with thwarted power, magic set free of the channels Gadar had forced
it into. Daryn grasped his friend's shoulder, shoved him hard, and sent him spinning to
the floor.
Writhing in agony so hideous that he could force no sound from his gaping mouth, Daryn
collapsed, twitching and hunching against the pain. Then, hissing and spitting, the
rainbow lights faded, drifted aimlessly for a moment, and vanished.
There was no longer a life to capture within the enchanted circle.
In the stricken silence, surrounded by the thinning power and the dawning knowledge of the
sacrifice Daryn had made, Tanis moved instinctively to Riana.
Stunned, she took a stumbling step toward the now-harmless circle where her brother lay.
Tanis caught her back and guided her carefully to Karel. On his knees, his head bowed,
Karel reached blindly for her hand.
“Why?” she asked, the question torn painfully from her weeping heart. “Why, Karel?”
Karel held her closely but did not reply. He looked up at Tanis as though to ask the same
question. But Tanis had no answer. Behind him he heard the mage groan, stir, and then fall
quiet. For all the sound of his own harsh breathing and Riana's weeping, the chamber
seemed suddenly silent. The old mage no longer breathed.
There must be answers, but the mage was not going to give them now. Tanis wondered if he
would have found them sufficient or even comprehensible had he been able to hear them.
What twisted purpose, he thought, his head aching with the wondering, would move a man to
this warped use of magic?