Stalking Darkness

4

Retak's daughters bid Seregil a fond farewell as he and their father left to meet Timan at the council house early the next day. To Seregil's dismay, a crowd had already assembled and many had snowshoes and poles ready.

Timan presented a young man to him. "I am too old now to make the journey, but my grandson, Turik, knows the place. He can guide you. These others will carry your belongings and gift offerings for the spirit."

Seregil groaned inwardly. The last thing he wanted was an audience, but he was too close to his objective to risk offending the village. Amid much cheering and singing, they set off for the head of the valley.

The Dravnian youths marched along easily, talking and joking as they broke trail. Seregil toiled doggedly in their wake, struggling with the thin air and a poor night's rest. One of Retak's sons fell in beside him, grinning.

"You had good hospitality last night, eh? My sisters were happy this morning."

"Oh, yes," wheezed Seregil. "I was kept very warm, thank you."

They reached the base of the pass just after midday.

Turik called a halt while an older man named Shradin went ahead to scout the snow.

Turik pointed up the pass. "The spirit home is there, but it's difficult going from here—fissures beneath the snow and avalanches. Shradin can read the snow better than anyone in the village."

Squatting on their snowshoes, the others watched as the guide explored the pass.

"Well, what do you think?" asked Seregil when Shradin returned.

The Dravnian shrugged. "It's only a little dangerous today. Still, it would be better if just a few go on from here. Turik knows the way and I know the snow. The rest of them better go home."

After some disgruntled grumbling, the others headed back to the village.

Shradin took the lead as they began their cautious ascent. Seregil and Turik following in single file. Seregil watched in silent admiration as the man probed ahead with his pole, leading them safely around deep fissures concealed just beneath the deceptively unbroken snow. Glad as he was of this, however, Seregil couldn't help glancing nervously up at the tons of snow and ice clinging precariously to the mountainsides above.

As they neared the top of the pass, Turik took the lead. "We are almost there," he said at last, pausing for Seregil to catch his breath.

Struggling up a last, steep face, Turik halted again and began casting around where the lip of the glacier met the rock face. After frequent sightings up at the peaks and much prodding with his pole, the young Dravnian raised his hand and waved for the others

Hung with icicles and half drifted over with snow, the opening of the passage resembled a fanged and sullen mouth. Digging with hands and snowshoes, they soon cleared the opening and peered down the steep black tunnel that descended into the ice.

Seregil felt a strange tingling in his hands and up his back as leaned over it; strong magic lay below.

"The first part of the way is slick," Turik warned, pulling a sack of ashes from his bag. "We'll need to scatter these as we go, or it's nearly impossible to climb back out again."

"I have to go alone from here," Seregil told him. "My magic is strong, but I can't be distracted worrying about the two of you. Wait for me here. If I'm not back by the time the sun touches that peak, come down for me, but not before. If your spirit kills me, give all my things to Retak and say he is to divide them as he sees fit."

Turik's eyes widened a bit at this, but neither he nor Shradin argued.

Seregil took off his bulky hat and tied his long hair back with a thong. Taking the small lightwand from his tool roll, he grasped the handle in his teeth and shouldered an ash bag and the cumbersome box.

"Aura's luck be with you," Shradin said solemnly, using the Aurenfaie name for Illior.

Let's hope it is, Seregil thought nervously as he began his descent.

The steep tunnel was narrow and slick as glass in places. Scattering ash in front of him, he crawled down, dragging the box behind. By the time the ice gave way to a more level stone passage, he was smeared black from head to foot.

The magic permeating the place grew stronger as he went down. The uncanny tingle he'd first noticed increased swiftly. There was a low buzzing in his ears and he could feel an ache growing behind his eyes.

"Aura Elustri malrei," he whispered, speaking the invocation to Illior aloud to test the effect. The silence absorbed his words without an echo and the tingling in his limbs continued unabated.

The tunnel ended at a tiny natural chamber scarcely larger than the passage itself. The shards of a broken bowl lay against the far wall.

The ceaseless noise in his ears made concentration difficult as Seregil began a careful search of the place. It wasn't a steady tone, but rose and fell erratically. At times he seemed to catch a faint hint of voices beneath the rest, but put it down to imagination.

Satisfied at last that no other passages were concealed by any method he could detect, he tucked his chilled hands into his coat and hunkered down to review the few facts he possessed.

"Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone. Stone within ice within stone within ice," the palimpsest had said.

Seregil looked around, frowning.

Well, I'm certainly beneath horns of stone. And to get here I've gone through the ice first, and then stone.

That left stone within ice still to go, but where? Though obscure in method, the palimpsest had been quite specific in giving the necessary directions. If there was some secret way beyond this point, then logic suggested that the final clues leading to it were also concealed in that same document.

Massaging his throbbing temples, he closed his eyes and recalled the details of the palimpsest's various inscriptions. Could he and Nysander have missed something in the rambling prophecies? Or perhaps Nysander had been wrong in his assertion that only one side of the document concealed a palimpsest.

Now there was an uncomfortable thought.

He was startled from his reverie by a blast of cold air. Opening his eyes, he found himself lying in the snow outside the tunnel entrance with Turik and Shradin kneeling over him with obvious concern. Over Shradin's shoulder he saw that the sun was already low behind the designated peak.

"What happened?" Seregil gasped, sitting up.

"We waited as long as we could," Turik apologized. "The time came and went for you to return. When we went down, we found you in a spirit dream."

"There's a storm coming," added Shradin, frowning up at the clouds. "They come on fast this time of year. We need to get back to the village while there's still light enough to go down safely. There's no shelter here, and nothing for a fire."

Seregil looked around in sudden alarm. "My sword! And the box—Where are they?"

"Here, beside you. We brought them out, too," Turik assured him. "But tell us, did you speak to the spirit? Do you know the reason for its anger?"

Still chagrined at having fallen so easily under the spell of the place, Seregil nodded slowly, buying time as he collected his thoughts.

"It's not your spirit who is angry, but another, an evil one," he told them. "This evil one keeps the other prisoner. It's a very strong spirit. I must rest and prepare myself to banish it."

Shradin looked up at the sky again. "You'll have time, I think."

Taking up their packs and poles, the Dravnian guides led Seregil back to the village for another night of exhausting hospitality.

As Shradin had predicted, a savage blizzard roared in through the teeth of the mountains during the night.

People fought their way through the howling wind to drive their livestock up the ramps into their towers, then sealed their doors and settled down to wait out the storm.

It raged steadily for two days. One house lost its felt roof, forcing the inhabitants to flee to a neighboring tower.

At another, a woman gave birth to twins.

Otherwise, the time was given over to eating, storytelling, and general husbandry. The Dravnians were philosophical about such conditions; what was the use of complaining about something that happened every winter? The blizzards were even beneficial. They piled snow around the house and helped keep the drafts out.

One family in particular regarded this storm as a stroke of luck, for it kept the Aurenfaie guest in their house for two nights.

Seregil was less complaisant about the-situation.

Ekrid had nine children, six of them daughters. One girl was too young, another in the midst of her menses, but that still left four to contend with and he didn't much like the competitive gleam in their eyes as they welcomed him.

To further complicate matters, the lower level had been given over to Ekrid's herd of goats and sheep, and their bleating and odor lent little to the general atmosphere. For two days, Seregil had to choose between evading the amorous advances of the girls or trying to walk three feet without treading in shit. His success was limited on both counts and his concentration on the problem at hand suffered.

Stretched out with two of Ekrid's daughters still twined around him the second night, Seregil stared up at the rafters and decided he'd had enough of women to last him for some time. Shifting restlessly in their musky embrace, he caught a hint of answering movement across the way where Ekrid's sons slept.

One of them had made long eyes at him the evening before—He gave the possibility a moment's consideration, but resolved dourly that there was little to be gained in that direction. The young man smelled as strongly of goat tallow and old hides as his sisters, and lacked a front tooth besides.

Lying back, he allowed himself a moment's longing for his own clean bed and a freshly bathed companion to share it. To his surprise, the anonymous figure swiftly transformed into Alec.

Father, brother, friend, and lover, the Oracle of Illior had told him that night in Rhiminee.

He supposed that, after a fashion, he had been father and brother to Alec, having more or less adopted him after their escape from Asengai's dungeon.

Seregil smiled wryly to himself in the darkness; it'd been the least he could do, considering that Alec was one of dozens of innocents captured and tortured by Asengai's men during their hunt for Seregil himself.

In the months since then they'd certainly become friends, and perhaps something more than friends.

But lovers?

Seregil had kept this possibility resolutely at bay, telling himself the boy was too young, too Dalnan, and, above all, too valued a companion to risk losing over something as inconsequential as sex.

And yet, lying exhausted among Ekrid's daughters, he suffered a guilty pang of arousal as he thought of Alec's slender body, his dark blue eyes and ready smile, the rough silken texture of his hair.

Haven't you had enough hopeless infatuations in your life? he scowled to himself. Rolling onto his belly, he turned his thoughts to the palimpsest, running through its cryptic phrases once again.

Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone. Stone within ice within stone within ice.

Damn, but there seemed little enough to be wrung out of it at this point. Slowly he repeated the phrase in its original Dravnian, then translated it into Konic, Skalan, and Aurenfaie, just for good measure.

Nothing.

Start again, he thought.

You're overlooking something. Think!

After this came the directions to the chamber. Before it were the prophetic ramblings: first the dancing animals, then the bones, and the strange words of the unscrambled cipher that unlocked the secret—

"Illior's Eyes!"

One of the girls stirred in her sleep, running a hand down his back. He forced himself to lie still, heart pounding excitedly.

The phrase! The phrase itself.

Those alien, throat-scraping words. If they were the key to the palimpsest, then why not to the magic of the chamber itself?

Assuming he was correct, however, this raised other considerations. If the words were simply a password spell, then he could probably use them without danger to himself or anyone else. But if they worked a deeper magic, what then?

He could go back to Nysander now with what he already knew. Still, the Plenimarans might be beating a trail up the valley at this very moment and Nysander would be too drained from the first translocation spell to send him or anyone else back immediately. Unless, of course, he enlisted the aid of someone more magically reliable rather than risk mishap—Magyana perhaps, or Thero.

To hell with that! I haven't come this far for someone else to see the mystery's end. First light tomorrow I'm going up that pass again, avalanches be damned.

As he drifted happily off to sleep, he realized that the wind had dropped at last.

Someone pounded on Ekrid's door just before dawn, waking the household.

"Come to the council house!" a voice shouted from outside. "Something terrible has happened. Come now!"

Extricating himself from a soft tangle of arms and thighs, Seregil threw on his clothes and ran for the council house with the others.

Faint, predawn light painted the snow blue, the towers black against it. Snowshoeing through the icy powder, Seregil found the village almost unrecognizable. The storm had buried the towers up to their doorsills, leaving the exposed upper story looking like an ordinary cottage drifted up with snow.

Shouldering his way through the crowd at the council house, he hurried downstairs to the meeting chamber.

The central fire had been lit and beside it crouched a woman he hadn't seen before. Surrounded by a silent, wide-eyed crowd, she clutched a small bundle against her breast, wailing hoarsely.

Retak's wife knelt beside her and gently folded back the blanket. Inside lay a dead infant. The stranger clutched the baby fiercely, her hands mottled with frostbite.

"What happened?" Seregil asked, slipping in beside Retak.

He shook his head sadly. "I don't know. She staggered into the village a little while ago and no one has been able to get any sense out of her."

"That is Vara, my husband's cousin from Torgud's village," a woman cried, pushing her way through the crowd. "Vara, Vara! What's happened to you?"

The woman looked up, then threw herself into her kinswoman's arms. "Strangers!" she cried.

"They came out of the storm. They refused the feast, killed the headman and his family. Others, many others, my husband, my children—My children!"

Throwing back her head, she let out a scream of anguish. People gasped and muttered, looking to Retak.

"But why?" Retak asked gently, bending over her.

"Who were they? What did they want?"

Vara covered her eyes and cowered lower. Seregil knelt and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder.

"Were they looking for the spirit home?"

The woman nodded mutely.

"But they refused the feast," he went on softly, feeling a coldness growing in the pit of his stomach.

"They affronted the village, and you would not deal with them."

"Yes," Vara whispered.

"And when the killing started, then did you tell them?"

Tears welled in Vara's eyes, rolling swiftly down her cheeks. "Partis told them, after they killed his wife," she sobbed weakly. "He told them of Timan and his clan. He thought the killing would stop. But it didn't. They laughed, some of them, as they killed us. I could see their teeth through their beards. They laughed, they laughed—"

Still clutching her dead child, she slumped over in a faint and several women carried her to a pallet by the wall.

"Who could do such things?" Retak asked in bewilderment.

"Plenimaran marines," Seregil growled, and every eye turned to him. "These men are enemies, both to me and to you. They seek the evil that lurks in your spirit home. When they find it, they'll worship it and sacrifice living people to it."

"What can we do?" a woman cried out.

"They'll come here," a man yelled angrily.

"Partis as good as set them upon us!"

"Do you have any weapons?" Seregil asked over the rising din.

"Nothing but wolf spears and skinning knives. How can we fight such men with those?"

"You're a magician!" shouted Ekrid. "Can't you kill them with your magic?"

Caught in a circle of expectant faces, Seregil drew a deep breath. "You've all seen the nature of my magic. I have no spells for killing men."

He let disappointment ripple through the crowd for an instant, then added, "But I may have something just as effective."

"What is that?" the man demanded skeptically.

Seregil smiled slightly. "A plan."

Retak called a halt at the base of the pass as the first lip of sun showed over the eastern peaks.

Shradin went ahead to assess the danger. The others—every man, woman, and child of Retak's village waited quietly for word to move on.

Mothers whispered again to their younger children why they must keep silent in the pass. The infants had been given llaki to make them sleep.

Seregil climbed an outcropping and shaded his eyes as he looked back across the snowfield. Blue shadow still lay-deep in the valley, but he could make out a dark column of men closing in on the village. It wouldn't take long for them to see that their prey had fled, or what direction they'd gone.

"There they are," he whispered to Retak. "We have to move on quickly!"

Hardly daring to breathe, they continued up the pass.

It was a fearsome journey. The villagers moved as swiftly as they could, some bowed under loads of fuel and food, others carrying children on their backs or aged relatives on litters. Only the muffled creak of snowshoes and pack straps broke the silence.

Old Timan trudged painfully along near the rear, supported by Turik and his brothers.

Mercifully, Vara had died and she and her child were hidden now in the drifts beyond the goat enclosures.

But her death was not in vain; she'd given Retak's village time to prepare.

Shimmering veils of snow blew across the pass, dislodging small falls down the slopes.

These gave out harmlessly in fine bits of crust, rolling down to leave mouse trails across their path.

Ominous cracks and groans echoed between the cliffs overhead, but Shradin gave no warning sign and Retak silently motioned his people on.

Trudging along in their midst, Seregil was deeply moved by the mix of fear, trust, and determination that drove these people forward. They'd welcomed him—a stranger-given him the best of all they had. When Retak claimed him as a member of his clan, it was meant literally. In the eyes of the Dravnians he was now a blood member of the community for as long as he wished to claim kinship.

The Plenimaran marines pursuing them had been offered the same welcome.

Looking back as they neared the cave, he saw that the enemy had reached the village and was now turning toward the pass.

You bastards! he thought bitterly.

You'd carve these people like sheep for whatever lies hidden at the end of that tunnel. You slaughtered Vara's village. But you were sloppy my friends, and that makes all the difference!

Up ahead Retak conferred briefly with Shradin, then motioned for a halt. Seregil climbed up to join them.

"Do those men know how to read the snow?" he whispered..

"Let's hope not. Retak, tell the others to move a bit and higher and watch for your signal. Are the young men in place?"

"They're ready. But what if this plan of yours doesn't work?"

"Then we'll need another plan." Feeling much less confident than he sounded, Seregil went to take his own position.

The villagers nervously watched the Plenimarans. The sun was higher now, and glinted back from spears and helmets below. What first appeared only as a long, dark movement against the snow soon resolved into individual men toiling toward them.

Whatever the Plenimarans think they're after here, they not taking any chances, Seregil thought, counting over a hundred men. He glanced briefly up the slope, trying to make mouth of the spirit chamber tunnel and wondering again what could be worth all this..

The Plenimarans were close enough for Seregil to make out the insignia on their breastplates before Shradin and Retak. The headman raised his staff overhead with both arms and let out a bloodcurdling yell. Every villager joined in

screaming at the top of their lungs. At the same time Seregil, Shradin, and the young men of the village shoved piles of loosened rock and ice chunks, sending them ca down the steep slope.

For an instant nothing happened.

Then the first rumblings sounded along the western face as tons of snow and ice sloughed off, plunging down on the column.

Seregil could see the pale ovals of upturned faces. The soldiers realized too late the trap they'd been drawn into. The neat column wavered and broke. Men foundered in the snow, throwing aside their arms as they sought some direction of escape it implacable wave bearing down on them.

The avalanche overtook them in seconds, carrying men like dead leaves in a flood, blotting them from sight.

A great cheer went up from the Dravnians and the sound brought down a second deafening avalanche from the east wall. It crashed down the valley to lap over the first with a roar of finality that echoed for minutes between the stark, sun-gilded peaks.

Shradin pounded Seregil joyfully on the back. "Didn't I say it would fall just so?" he shouted. "No one could have survived that!"

Seregil took a last wondering look down at the massive slide, then waved for Turik. "It's time I completed my work. This evil must be removed from your valley so no others will come seeking it."

Amazingly, the tunnel opening was still clear, though drifts were piled thickly around the spot. With the women singing victory songs behind him, Seregil once again made his way down the slick, cramped passage. The noises in his head and the tingling in his skin were as bad as before, but this time he ignored them, knowing what he had to do.

"Here we are again," he whispered, reaching the chamber.

Refusing to consider the various ramifications of being wrong about the nature of the magic, he hugged the box against his side and said loudly, "Argucth chthon hrig.»

An eerie silence fell over the chamber. Then he heard a soft tinkling sound that reminded him of embers cooling on a hearth. Tiny flashes like miniature lightning flickered across the rock face at the far end of the chamber.

Seregil took a step back, then dove for the mouth of the tunnel as the stone exploded.

Jagged shards flew up the tunnel, hissing like arrows as they scored the back of his thick coat and trousers. Others ricocheted and spattered in a brief, deadly storm around the tiny chamber.

It was over in an instant. Seregil lay with his arms over his head a moment longer, then cautiously held up the lightstone and looked back.

An opening had been blasted in the far wall, revealing a dark space beyond.

Drawing his sword, Seregil approached and looked into the second chamber. It was roughly the size of his sitting room at the Cockerel, and at the back of it a glistening slab of ice caught the glow of his lightstone, reflecting it across a tangle of withered corpses that covered the floor.

The constant cold beneath the glacial ice had drawn the moisture from the bodies over uncounted years, leaving them dark and shrunken, lips withered into grimaces, eyes dried away like raisins, hands gnarled to talons.

Seregil sank to his knees, cold sweat running down his chest beneath his coat. Even in their mummified state, he could see that their chests had been split open, the ribs pulled wide. Only a few months earlier his friend and partner, Micum Cavish, had come upon a similar scene nearly a thousand miles away, in the Fens below Blackwater Lake. But there some of the bodies had been newly killed. These had been here for decades, perhaps centuries. Putting this together with Nysander's veiled threats and secrecy, Seregil felt a twinge of genuine fear.

The singing whine in his ears was much worse here. Kneeling there at the mouth of the chamber, Seregil suddenly envisioned what the victims' last moments must have been.

Waiting to be dragged into the killing chamber.

Listening to the screams.

The steam rising from torn bodies—

He could almost catch the sound of those tortured voices echoing back faintly over the years.

Shaking such fancies off uneasily, he climbed in to examine the mysterious slab.

The rough-hewn block of ice was half as long as he was tall, and nearly four feet thick. The aura of the place was worse here; a nasty prickling sensation played over his skin, like ants beneath his clothes. His head pounded. The ringing in his ears swelled like a chorus of voices wailing an octave beyond the scope of pain.

More disturbing still was the sudden flair of pain around the scar on his chest. It burned like a fresh wound, driving a deep spike of pain at his heart.

Working swiftly, Seregil took the two flasks from the box, unwrapped them, and poured out the dark contents of the first in a circle on top of the ice. With his dagger, he scratched the symbols of the Four inside the circle: a lemniscate for Dalna; Illior's simple crescent; the stylized ripple of a wave for Astellus; the flame triangle of Sakor. They formed the four points of a square when he had finished.

Unnatural flames licked up as the liquid ate into the ice and a soft, answering glow sprang up in the center of the slab, revealing the outline of a circular object embedded there.

A fresh blast of pain tightened Seregil's breath in his throat. He reached into his coat and felt wetness there. Tearing open the neck of his coat and shirt with bloodied fingers, he found that his skin had opened around the edges of the scar.

There were voices all around him now, whispering, sighing, keening. His hands shook as he quickly emptied the second vial onto the ice. More flames licked up, guttering in the faint, unnatural breeze rising around him. Invisible fingers brushed his face, plucked at his clothing, stroked his hair.

A first translucent point of crystal protruded from the shrinking ice, quickly followed by seven more in a slanting ring.

The singing, at once tortured and exultant, rose to fill the cramped chamber. Seregil pressed his hands to his ears as he crouched, waiting.

The magical liquid burned and boiled away until eight blade-like crystal spikes were revealed, set in a circlet of some sort.

Seregil bent to pull it free and a drop of blood fell from his chest onto the ice within the circlet.

He paused, strangely fascinated, as another followed, and another. A stone shard had grazed the back of his hand and this, too, was oozing blood. A rivulet of it ran down between his fingers onto the point he was grasping, streaking it like ruby as it trickled to the little pool gathering in the center of the crown.

The singing was clearer now, suddenly sweet and soothing and somehow familiar. Seregil's throat strained to capture the impossible notes as the blood dripped down from his chest.

Not yet, the voices crooned. Unseen hands stroked him, supporting him as he stooped over the crown.

Watch! See the loveliness being wrought.

The gathering blood sank into the ice as an answering rubescent blush spread slowly up through each crystal point.

Oh, yes! he thought.

How beautiful!

Their sides were sharp. They cut into his palms as he gripped them. More blood trickled down and the crystal blushed a darker red.

But a new voice was intruding from a distance, rough and discordant.

Nothing, sang the voices.

It is nothing. There is only our music here.

Join us, lovely one, join our song, the only song. For the Beautiful One, the Eater of Death.

It was distracting, this ugly new tone. But as he bowed his head, straining against this raw new voice he found that it, too, was familiar.

He'd almost succeeded in blocking it out when all at once he recognized it-the sound of his own hoarse screams.

The beautiful illusions shattered as searing bolts of pain slammed up his arms, seeking his heart.

"Aura!" he cried out, wrenching the crown free with the last of his strength.

"Aura Elustri malrei!"

Staggering through a haze of agony, he thrust the crown into the silver-lined box and drove the latch into place.

Silence fell like a blow. Collapsing among the corpses, he pressed his bloody hands to the front of his coat.

"Maros Aura Elustri chyptir," he murmured thankfully as he slipped into a half faint. "Chyptir maros!"

The Beautiful One, the voices had said. The Eater of Death.

Gradually he became aware of another presence in the chamber, and with it a pervasive sense of peace mingled with sadness.

This, he realized, must be the true spirit, the one that had created this place and inhabited it until the crown was hidden here. With an ironic grin, he recalled the tale of warring spirits he'd concocted for Turik and Shradin the first time he'd come out of the cave. It seemed he'd spoken the truth in spite of himself.

"Peace to you, spirit of this place," he rasped in Dravnian. "Your sanctuary will be properly cleansed."

The presence gathered around him for a moment, soothing away his pain and weariness. Then it was gone.

Shouldering the box, Seregil crawled slowly back up the tunnel. Turik and Timan were keeping watch at the opening when he stumbled out into the sunlight.

The old man clutched Seregil's arm wordlessly, tears of gratitude glittering in his rheumy eyes.

"He lives! The Aurenfaie's alive! Bring bandages," Turik called to the others, examining Seregil's hands with concern.

The cry passed from mouth to mouth and soon the whole village had gathered solemnly around them.

"Terrible sounds came out of the ground, then all was still," Retak told Seregil. "Timan said you had driven out the bad spirit, but he didn't know if you'd survived the ordeal. Tell us of your battle with the evil spirit!"

Seregil groaned inwardly.

Bilairy's Balls, they want another story!

Climbing to his feet, he held up the box.

"I've captured the evil spirit that troubled you. It's imprisoned here."

Round-eyed, the Dravnians regarded the battered wooden chest. Even the children did not venture to approach it. Filthy and exhausted, Seregil did his best to look like a victorious wizard as he mixed fact and fiction to best effect.

"In the time of Timan's ancestor, this evil thing came to your valley and invaded the spirit home, holding the true spirit prisoner and troubling those who entered the chamber. I found its secret lair and battled it there. It was a strong spirit and it fought mightily, as you can see."

The villagers' eyes grew rounder as they pressed around him to see what sort of marks a spirit left on a man.

"By my magic, and by the powers of sacred Aura and the true spirit of this place, I vanquished and captured it. Your spirit came to me, easing my wounds and asking that the sanctuary be cleansed so that your people may once again come to it in peace. There are bodies there now, victims of the evil one. You must not fear them. Take them away and burn them as is proper, so that their spirits can rest. This is no longer a place of evil."

The Dravnians cheered wildly as he paused to catch up with his own invention. By the time they'd settled down again, he was ready.

"If any man comes seeking the evil one, bring them to this place and tell them how Meringil, son of Solun and Nycanthi, mage of Aurenen, captured the evil spirit and took it away forever. Remember this day and tell the story to your children so that they will remember. Let no person among your clans forget that evil was cast out from here. And now I must go."

The villagers surged forward, imploring him to stay.

Unvisited maidens wept with disappointment and one of Ekrid's daughters threw herself into his arms sobbing. Putting her gently aside, he gathered his gear and palmed the last of Nysander's painted wands from the pouch at his belt. He snapped it behind his back and the Dravnians shrank back in fear as the translocation vortex opened behind him. Waving a last farewell, he forced a smile as he stepped backward into emptiness.

Thero was on his way upstairs when a muffled crash halted him in his tracks. There was no doubt where the sound had come from; every door along the curved corridor—the bedchambers, the guest room—stood open except one.

The sitting-room door, with its magical wards and protections, was always kept shut unless Nysander was inside. Nonetheless, putting his ear to the door, Thero heard a low groan inside.

"Nysander!" he called, but his master was already hurrying down the tower stairs, robes flapping beneath his leather apron.

"There's someone in there," Thero exclaimed, gaunt face flushed with excitement.

Nysander opened the door and snapped his fingers at the nearest lamp. The wick flared up and by its light they saw Seregil sprawled in the middle of the room, his back arched awkwardly over the pack he wore, the strap of the battered wooden chest tangled around one leg. His eyes were closed, his face colorless beneath streaks of grime and blood.

"Get water, a basin, and linen. Hurry!" said

Nysander, going to Seregil and pulling at the front of his coat.

Thero hurried off to fetch the required articles.

When he returned a few moments later,

Nysander was examining a raw wound on Seregil's chest. "How bad is it?" he asked.

"Not so bad as it looks," said Nysander, covering the wound with a cloth. "Give me a hand with these filthy clothes."

"What happened to him this time?" Thero asked, gingerly pulling off the unconscious man's boots.

"He's got the same sort of preternatural stench he had when he came back—"

"Very similar. Fetch the things for a minor purification. And, Thero?"

Halfway out the door already, Thero paused, expecting some explanation.

"We shall not speak of this again."

"As you wish," Thero replied quietly.

Focused on Seregil, Nysander did not see the hot color that leapt into Thero's sallow cheeks beneath his thin beard, or the sudden angry set of his jaw.

Later, with Seregil asleep under Thero's watchful eye, Nysander paid his nightly visit to the lowest vault beneath the Oreska House. He was not the only one who wandered here late at night. Many of the older wizards preferred to pursue their research when the scholars and apprentices were out of the way. Proceeding on through the long passages and down stairways, he nodded to those he met, stopping now and then to chat. He'd never made any secret of his evening constitutionals. Had anyone over the years ever noticed that he seldom followed the same route twice? That there was always one point, one stretch of blank, innocent wall, which he never failed to pass?

And how many of these others, Nysander wondered as he went on, kept watch as he did over some secret charge?

Reaching the lowest level, he wended his way with more than even his usual caution through the maze of corridors to the place, though his carefully woven magicks kept all from perceiving the box he carried.

Satisfied that he was unobserved, he lowered his head, summoned a surge of power, and silently invoked the Spell of Passage. A sensation like a mountain wind passed through him, chilling him to the bone.

Hugging the grimy box to his chest, he walked through the thick stonework of the wall and into the tiny chamber beyond.