Swordmage

FOURTEEN

25 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One

After Geran and Hamil ate a cold lunch from the rations they had on hand, Geran laid out his bedroll and stretched out on the cold stone floor. He was not especially sleepy, but if he could lie quietly and let his mind rest for a time, he would be able to ready himself for studying his spells. He knew from experience that he couldn’t fix a spell in his mind when he was tired or distracted. The long ride over the moors, the excavation of the stairwell, the exploration of the vaults, and finally the battle against the sphinx-statue had worn him too much to try his spellbooks with any hope of success. The words were simple to commit to memory, of course, but each spell also required a carefully built structure of symbology, philosophy, even a certain attitude or particular mode of thinking that would imbue the words he spoke with real and significant power. He needed only a few minutes’ meditation to restore the expended power to many of his minor spells, but his longer incantations were far more strenuous and took much longer to replenish.

Geran dozed for a long time, then rose, ate and drank a little more, and began to study his books. He didn’t use some of these spells very often, so he studied them carefully to make certain that he would be able to speak them correctly. Six hours after he’d entered the vault of the Infiernadex, he was ready to make his exit. He replaced his spellbook in his pack and stood, wincing when his bruised ribs protested. “All right, Hamil. Ready to leave?”

The halfling jumped to his feet. “I’ve been ready for hours. Can you erase the symbols?”

“No, we’re going to go around them. I don’t have quite the right spell to do it directly, but I can manage it with three. But I’ll need a little light, first.” Geran dug a copper coin out of his pocket, whispered a light spell, and tossed it through the doorway to the darkened antechamber outside. With relief he noted that the floor remained depressed to the level of the buried vault. If the floor had raised itself back to the original level, his task would have been much harder. Geran moved closer to the doorway, remaining a short distance outside the influence of the symbols. He concentrated, focused his will, and said, “Seiroch!”

An instant of darkness, and then he was standing on the floor of the antechamber, looking back through the doorway at Hamil. He waited a moment to see if any new traps had been activated, but nothing happened.

“Well, it appears that you’ve seen to your own escape,” Hamil remarked. “Shall I just wait here, then?”

“I’m not finished,” Geran said. He took a deep breath, stilled his mind, and unlocked the unfamiliar structures of a spell he rarely used. “Sierollanie dir mellar!”

A faint violet light sprang up around Hamil, who looked startled, and a similar one appeared around the swordmage. Then once again he felt the brief instant of lightless cold, and he was standing back in the chamber of the Infiernadex, while Hamil was outside in the antechamber.

The halfling looked around, and laughed. “My circumstances have improved, but you are right back where you started, Geran! Is this one of those fox-goose-and-grain problems? If you’re stumped, I may be able to help, you know.”

“I’m still not finished. Give me a few moments.” Geran sat down to compose himself and rest, closing his eyes and using the elven methods that Daried had taught him in Myth Drannor. A few minutes later, he was ready. He stood up, checked his location, and repeated his spell of transport: “Seiroch!”

One more instant of dizzying darkness, and he stood beside Hamil in the antechamber. “I don’t know any spells that would let both of us teleport together,” he explained. “So I had to settle for the spell that would switch our places. The minor teleport only takes me a few minutes to ready.”

Hamil gave him a small bow. “You are a more accomplished wizard than I remembered, Geran. Did you learn that in Myth Drannor?”

“If I were a true wizard I could’ve simply conjured us both out of the vault and saved us the ride back to Hulburg for that matter. But yes, that’s a spell I learned in Myth Drannor, along with a few others.” Geran made a stirrup of his hands to help Hamil back up to the passageway above. Then he leaped up, caught the edge, and scrambled up with a hand from the halfling. He looked back down at the door to the secret vault. “We should put the floor back. The Verunas might miss the vault, and they won’t realize that we’ve been here already.”

“Done,” said Hamil. He leaped corner-to-corner over the pit and worked his way around to the statue with its niche. In a moment he rotated it back into place. The antechamber floor rose back into place with a heavy scraping of stone on stone and the clanking of hidden chains. “I hope our mounts haven’t run off or been eaten by something. I don’t care for a long walk back to the abbey.”

“Nor do I.” Geran led the way back to the wall they’d opened at the foot of the stairwell and ducked through it again. It was dark outside, but he’d expected that. They’d opened the mound in the early afternoon, and they’d been inside for many hours. He climbed back up into the night-cold, damp, windy, and mist-blown, as so many nights on the Highfells were. He looked around to see whether their horses were still present. The animals stamped and neighed nervously where they’d been picketed, the saddles and tack piled up where they’d left it. Geran slipped down the side of the mound and headed toward the animals, wondering if perhaps they’d caught more of the strange shadow’s scent.

Hamil followed after him. “Do we try to make it back to the abbey tonight?”

Geran started to answer, but paused. He thought he heard something, a faint creaking, perhaps the jingle of mail. He slid his sword out of its sheath and peered into the darkness. They’d had the light spell to see by in the barrow, but he hadn’t stopped to let his eyes adjust to the night. Now he realized that he couldn’t see very well at all, whereas someone who might have been waiting outside would be quite used to the darkness.

“Hamil, someone’s here,” he said softly. “Cuillen mhariel!”

The faint sheen of the silversteel veil flickered around him. He felt Hamil close behind him and heard the rasp of steel on leather as the halfling swept out his own daggers. “We walked right into it,” the halfling muttered.

Silently, men in mail stood from where they’d been lying in the heather. They were empty black shadows in the moonless night, but then several of the men unshuttered lanterns and shone them at the two companions. In the sudden circle of light, Geran saw that they were surrounded by close to a score of armsmen in the green and white surcoats of House Veruna. Several aimed bows at Geran.

“Well, here they are, lads,” one of the shadowy figures rasped. He came closer, and Geran recognized the lean, hawkish features and ebon half-plate armor of Anfel Urdinger, captain of House Veruna. “I think you’ve got something I want, Geran Hulmaster. Lay down your sword at your feet, and throw your pack over here. Your small friend too, and you can tell him that he’d better keep his hands where we can see them.”

Of all the luck! Hamil said silently. They finally find the barrow they’re looking for on the day we visit!

To Bane with luck, someone must have told them where we were, Geran answered his friend. This barrow was simply too far from the others that had been opened; it was too much of a coincidence to believe that Urdinger and his men had happened across it. Mostly to give himself a moment to think, he called back to Urdinger, “If we surrender our arms, what guarantees do you give us?”

“I don’t see that I need to give you any at all, but I suppose I’ll let you ride away with no more trouble,” Urdinger answered. “The book’s my only concern. Do you have it?”

They can’t let us live, Geran, Hamil said. If we give up our blades, they’ll take what they want and kill us anyway. Best to make a break back for the barrow and hope we don’t get shot down before we get there.

I know it, Geran replied to his friend.

Against three or four men-perhaps five-he might have tried to fight his way clear, even with the disadvantage of being caught by surprise. But there were simply too many mercenaries around them. A retreat to Terlannis’s barrow was the best of their poor options; in the cramped passage at the foot of the stairs, their opponents’ numbers would mean nothing, and they might achieve a standoff of sorts. Geran edged back a couple of steps, weighing their odds of reaching the barrow entrance, but then he sensed stealthy movement behind him.

He turned to look. There, not twenty feet away, the night mists swirled and coalesced into a great black panther who padded out of the fog. Its yellow eyes glittered with malice… and perhaps a glint of intelligence. In any event, it was between the two comrades and the dubious safety of the barrow entrance.

“I see you’ve met Umbryl,” Urdinger said with a nasty laugh. “I’d stand still, if I were you. Now, if you don’t do what I say and drop your damned elf-sword to the ground, I’m going to let the panther have you.”

That explains much, Geran decided. The panther trailed them, and it must have gone to summon the Verunas when they entered the barrow. The swordmage took one more look around and grimaced. “You can have the book, then,” he said. He let his rucksack slip from his shoulder, knelt, and rummaged through it for the Infiernadex, one eye on the spectral panther. In a moment he stood back up with the ancient tome in his left hand, the sword in his right. He felt Hamil shift uncomfortably, all too aware that the necromancer’s book was their only bargaining chip, but the halfling said nothing. He whispered to the halfling, “Watch yourself.”

Make your move, Hamil answered.

Geran lowered his voice and muttered a spell: “Arvan sannoghan,” he hissed, and all at once bright blue-white flames sprang into existence all along his sword. He raised it over the heavy tome he held in his other hand and shouted, “Not a single move, or I will destroy the book!”

The Veruna swordsmen surged forward in anger, but a single sharp command from Urdinger stopped them in their tracks. “Hold!” the Veruna captain shouted at his men. Geran risked a glance behind him and saw the spectral panther crouch and hiss, but it did not spring at them. Urdinger’s good humor-such as it was-fell away, and the mercenary glared at Geran. “You fool,” he spat. “If you harm that book, there’ll be no reason to let you leave this place!”

“I can’t see a reason why you’d let us go, whether you get your hands on the book or not,” Geran retorted. “If you intend to kill me no matter what, I might as well burn this musty old collection of hexes just to spite you before I die.”

“I can have my bowmen shoot you down right now.”

“Are you that certain of their aim? Miss by just a little, and I’ll burn the Infiernadex to ash with my last breath.” Geran paused, measuring the effect of his words on the Veruna captain, and added, “I’ll trade the book for our lives. But you won’t have both, I can promise you that.”

The mercenary captain scowled. “All right, then. Make a suggestion.”

Hamil glanced up at Geran, then back to the Veruna men surrounding them. “Yes, make a suggestion, Geran,” he said.

“Give us two horses,” Geran said to Urdinger. “Then draw back outside of bowshot. I’ll leave the book here, and we’ll ride off.”

“What’s to keep you from riding off with the book once we draw back? Or destroying it once we’re too far away to interfere, for that matter?”

“What’s to keep you from pursuing us once you’ve got the book?” Geran answered. “The only way this works is for both of us to do what we say we’re going to do and believe that the other fellow means it. As for destroying the Infiernadex, well, I have it in my power to do that right now, so what would change?”

Urdinger frowned and turned away to mutter something to the mercenaries next to him. But he never said whatever he intended to say next, for abruptly the wind died, the night grew bitterly cold, and white hoarfrost appeared on the heather. Geran’s breath steamed before him, and even the flickering blue flames of the fiery aura on his sword dimmed and wavered. The Veruna men shifted nervously and looked around, and the two companions did likewise.

The chill voices are back, Hamil said. Something is coming.

“I feel it too,” Geran said. “What else can go wrong?” He glanced back at Umbryl, but the spectral panther had disappeared. He swore under his breath and tried to watch in all directions at once. That’s what I get for asking, he told himself. Now I have to wonder if the damned panther is sneaking up behind me.

Suddenly a column of dark, cold flames erupted from the ground not far from where Geran and Hamil stood, and a figure of nightmare stepped forth. It was a skeleton, dressed in the old, tattered remnants of regal robes. A heavy golden band served as its crown, and it carried a tall, twisted staff of dead gray wood in its bony talons. Geran heard metal rasping on metal as the thing emerged from the black flames. The skeleton’s bones were riveted together by bands of rune-inscribed copper, green and dull with age. Its eyes were burning points of phosphorescent emerald fire, keen and malevolent.

The swordmage’s heart froze in his chest at the mere sight of the thing, and he took a step back without even realizing it-an unseen mantle of dread and despair seemed to flow before the apparition, as if its mere presence cast some grievous shadow on the souls of the living. Several of the Veruna men actually fell and buried their faces against the ground, unable to endure its presence at all. Part of Geran’s mind noted that the apparition’s appearance had provided the best distraction they were likely to get if they were to attempt a break for the barrow, but he was unable to wrench his eyes away from the dreadful king.

The grim figure fixed its burning green eyes on Geran. It was all that he could do to stand without quailing in front of it. Then it spoke: “Five centuries have I waited for that book to be brought out of the Lathanderian wards. I will not permit you to damage it now, young fool.”

Geran was frozen in the icy grip of the skeleton’s gaze. “You are Aesperus,” he said in a weak voice. He’d heard enough tales whispered by firelight in Griffonwatch when he was young to recognize the dreadful lich who had stalked the Highfells for centuries-a mighty wizard dead for hundreds of years, yet preserved by dark and potent necromancy. Geran had always wondered why he was called the King in Copper; now he knew. The lich’s bones were fairly held together by it.

“King Aesperus to you,” the lich hissed. He glared at Geran, and his eyes flamed brighter with the intensity of his scrutiny. “Hmmm. You are a Hulmaster; I know the smell of your blood. Isolmar is dead now, so you must be Bernov’s son Geran. Of you I have heard little.”

Geran said nothing for a long moment; it was terribly hard to form a thought, let alone speak, while Aesperus held his gaze. Finally he managed to say, “I’ll barter the Infiernadex for our lives, King Aesperus.”

The lich laughed coldly. “What care I for your lives?” he said. He stretched out his clawlike hand and made a small gesture, and the Infiernadex was wrenched out of Geran’s grasp by some unseen force, savagely strong. The book soared to the lich’s hand, and Aesperus twisted what remained of his face into a horrible smile. “Good-bye, Geran Hulmaster. I expect that you and I will speak again soon, when you have been laid under stone as your forefathers were.”

Aesperus turned away from Geran, and the swordmage felt strength and volition returning to his limbs. The lich looked at Anfel Urdinger, who averted his eyes and stared at the ground between his feet. “Tell your mistress that I hold her part of our bargain accomplished. Disturb no more barrows, Captain. You have no more reason to plunder my realm.” Then Aesperus took an old amulet of verdigris-covered copper from his rotting robes, and put it in Urdinger’s hand. “He who wears this token may call on my minions, and they will answer and do his bidding. Now I have upheld my own part, too.”

“Yes, mighty king,” Urdinger mumbled. He took the copper amulet and slipped it into a pouch at his belt. “I’ll tell Lady Darsi what you have said.”

“Tell her this too: Do not use my gift in the bright hours of day, and do not try to send my minions far from the amulet. She should choose the time and place carefully, for my servants will answer but grudgingly.” Tucking the tome under his bony arm, the lich strode off into the night. On the third stride he simply melted into a black mist that dissipated as the wind quickly arose again. The white hoarfrost covering the heather vanished as well, and Geran took a deep breath.

They were still surrounded by a score of Veruna guardsmen. And he no longer had the book to bargain with.

Urdinger looked back up and shook himself. Then he fixed his eyes on Geran with a wide, predatory smile. “It seems that you’ve lost your bargaining chip, Lord Geran. Your previous offer was the Infiernadex in exchange for your life. Have you got anything else to add at this time?”

This does not look good, Hamil observed. Try for the barrow?

Agreed, Geran answered. Follow me when I move. Then he quickly called out a spell: “Theillalagh na drendir!”

The violet ripples of his dragon-scale spell shimmered brightly around him, and Geran hurled himself into motion. He darted off to his right, heading for the nearest bowman he could see. Arrows thrummed and hissed as they flew at him, but he’d judged his moment well; most of the Veruna men had lowered their weapons when the lich had made his appearance, so they hastily raised and drew while he was already in motion. One arrow was deflected by his silver-steel veil, another struck his dragon-scale spell and rebounded as if it had hit thick plate armor, several more hissed by him, but one well-aimed arrow found its way through his spell-shields and buried its broad head in his left arm.

Geran cried out and staggered but managed to recover his stride. The man in front of him leveled his bow right at Geran’s face-but Geran was upon him, and he slashed his burning sword across the man’s weapon, cutting the bow in two and sending the Veruna archer to the ground with a long, seared cut across his face, neck, and chest. The man shrieked and thrashed.

“Get them!” Urdinger roared. “They can’t get away!”

Two men in mail tried to cut off Geran, but he was faster than they were. A quick passing parry, and he was by them. He heard Hamil’s bowstring sing and a strangled cry from behind him, but he didn’t slow down. He rounded halfway around the barrow, scrambled up onto the sloping top, and ducked into the steep stone stairwell just ahead of more arrows and several of the Veruna swordsmen. Hamil skidded down the steps behind him, and Geran dove headlong through the hole he’d made in the wall at the bottom of the steps. Hamil followed after him. The halfling rolled easily to his knees, spun, and fired a couple of arrows back up the stairwell.

“I don’t believe that worked,” Hamil muttered. “Are you all right, Geran?”

“Almost,” Geran answered. His arm burned fiercely, it seemed that he’d knocked his shins against the stones in the stairwell, and his ribs still hurt from the fight against the bronze sphinx earlier. But he seemed more or less intact. The arrow in his arm was not as deep as he had feared-his spell-shields had likely slowed it some before it struck. He gritted his teeth and carefully worked it out. Blood streamed down his arm and dripped on the cold flagstones. “How about you? Are you hurt?”

“Me? No, they were all shooting at you. You’re a much bigger target, and your sword’s on fire. I could have slunk off into the fog, and they never would’ve noticed.” Hamil peered back up the stairwell and risked another quick shot. Another man cried out and cursed viciously.

“Watch it, you fools!” Urdinger shouted from somewhere out of sight. The Veruna mercenaries shouted at each other for a brief chaotic moment, then the captain’s voice carried over the others. “Shut your damned mouths! Keep it quiet!”

Well, now the darkness favors us, Hamil said silently. It’s pitch black down here, and anybody who sets foot on the stairs is silhouetted against the sky. So what next?

“I’m still working on that,” Geran whispered. They could stay barricaded inside the barrow entrance for quite some time-the stairs would allow only one man at a time to approach, and it would be almost impossible for the Veruna archers to shoot past their own man on the stairs. What would he do in Urdinger’s place? The mercenary captain could simply fill in the stairwell and leave, but he couldn’t be sure that Geran and Hamil wouldn’t dig themselves out after he left. So maybe he’d just set watch over the top of the stairs and let them die of thirst or starvation. “Or maybe a shield or mantlet of some kind,” Geran mused. “Carry it in front to block our arrows, move down, and get to the wall. But then you’d still have to get through the hole.”

They could smoke us out, Hamil offered. Use a mantlet to get down here and then throw some burning brands through the hole, drive us back from the gap. And… don’t forget that panther they have. As far as we know it could simply appear behind us and catch us looking up the stairs.

Geran glanced over his shoulder at the black passageway behind them. “That’s a reassuring thought,” he muttered. He peered up the stairwell as far as he dared. Urdinger was certain to be turning over the same possibilities in his own head. Likely he had an option or two that Geran hadn’t even considered yet, such as hiring a wizard to blast open the barrow or summon some demon who could simply rip them apart, swords and arrows be damned.

They heard a sharp exchange of voices atop the barrow, but it wasn’t very clear. Geran thought he heard Urdinger say something that ended with, “… it’s none of your affair!” The other voice responded, too far downwind to make out clearly. Geran glanced down at Hamil. “Something’s going on up there,” he said. “Are they arguing-?”

Before he finished his question, a brilliant flash of light seared the darkness outside their bolthole, followed by the low rumbling whoosh of fire. Mercenaries suddenly shouted in panic, and Urdinger shouted, “Archers! Bring him down now!”

The night blazed again with a brilliant yellow flash, a sharp crack, and a deafening peal of thunder that jarred a pinch of dirt loose from the passage ceiling. An acrid smell drifted down to where Geran and Hamil crouched, and the Veruna mercenaries cried out in dismay. An instant later, more fire belched across the night sky.

“What in the Nine Hells is this?” Geran said.

“They’re trying to lure us out?” the halfling guessed.

“Somehow I doubt it.” Geran stared up at the mouth of the stairwell. He could hear men shouting and running, the distant ring of steel, the panicked whinnying of horses. They could wait it out and see what happened next… or they could move while the Verunas were distracted. In an instant, Geran made up his mind. He clambered back out of the hole in the wall, crouching low in the stairway, and carefully climbed the steps, expecting another arrow at any moment.

You’ve lost your mind! Hamil said, but he climbed out as well.

Another thunderbolt pealed across the hilltop, and in the single brief flash of light Geran saw something completely unexpected. The Veruna mercenaries ran this way and that, hugging boulders and tufts of high grass for cover as they confronted a single man-the horned sorcerer that Kara, Hamil, and he had met up with at the barrow where Jarad had fallen. He stood in midair fifteen feet above the ground, surrounded by a storm of fire, his coat of scarlet and gold billowing in the wind. One of the Verunas shot at him with a crossbow, but the sorcerer batted away the bolt with a gesture and turned a fearsome glare at the fellow who had shot. The crossbowman staggered back, his clothes smoking, and then he burst into flame. Screaming horribly, he flailed away into the night fog.

Two of the Veruna armsmen still crouched nearby, distracted by the battle raging a short distance away. Then one glanced down and caught a glimpse of Geran by the light of a blast of fire. “The others!” he shouted. “They’re making a break-” Then a short arrow took him in the face and sent him staggering backward.

“Shhhh,” Hamil said. “That’s a good fellow.”

Geran quickly bounded up the steps as the armsman waiting there scrambled to his feet and launched himself down. They met on the top stair; the man parried Geran’s thrust at his midsection and replied with a vicious cut at Geran’s head that the swordmage simply ducked under before surging up and scoring with a long passing cut to the neck as he shouldered the man out of the way. The Veruna man spun half around and fell where he stood.

From the foot of the barrow, a man Geran hadn’t noticed before raised a wand and pointed at the sorcerer in scarlet and gold. A trio of shrieking blue missiles screamed out of the wand, weaved their way through the sorcerer’s fiery aura, and hammered home against his side. The horned man cried out and staggered in midair, clamping a hand to his injury. The Veruna mageling shouted in triumph and aimed another burst at him. Geran had no idea whether the horned man-the tiefling, that’s what his kind was called-was an enemy or not, but for the moment the mercenaries of House Veruna were a common foe, so he raced down the side of the mound and hurled himself at the unsuspecting Veruna mage. The fellow sensed danger and started to turn just in time to see the swordstroke that decapitated him. Hamil followed a step behind him, now with knives in his hands since he’d shot all his arrows. “Are you sure this is our fight, Geran?” he called.

“I’m making it ours,” Geran answered. He found himself engaged with another Veruna swordsman and fought a furious duel for several long moments, Mulman broadsword against elf-wrought backsword, blades flashing in the darkness and firelight. Hamil skirmished against another swordsman who moved in to attack Geran’s back while Geran was battling the first, and managed to slash the man across the knee badly enough to put him on the ground-at which point the halfling swarmed over him and finished him with a dagger through the visor of his helm.

For his own part Geran almost stepped onto his opponent’s swordpoint but saw through the feint at the last moment. He beat his adversary’s point up into the air, and ran him through beneath the arm. The swordmage quickly spun clear, searching for another foe, but no more Veruna men remained on their feet nearby. He caught a glimpse of Urdinger and half a dozen men galloping away into the darkness, pursued by flaming bolts the tiefling hurled after them. Then the battlefield fell silent except for the low, smoldering crackle of grassfires kindled by the sorcerer’s fire. The tiefling snarled something after the fleeing mercenaries and allowed himself to drift back to earth. Then he caught sight of Geran and Hamil.

“Hold!” Geran called. “We’ve got no quarrel with you.”

“That remains to be seen,” the tiefling answered. He held his curved metal rod at the ready, but he did not move to attack. “The book!” he demanded. “Where is it?”

Geran studied the tiefling for a long moment before answering. The man was obviously a very capable sorcerer, but Geran knew that his spell-shields would stand up better to blasts of flame and bolts of lightning than the mundane mail the Veruna men wore. He took his time answering in order to make sure that the sorcerer would understand that he did not answer out of fear. “If you’re speaking of the Infiernadex, then the lich Aesperus has it,” he said. “The Veruna men followed us to this barrow, and I think Aesperus followed them. He took the book from me and departed not more than half an hour ago.”

“You should take up the matter of the book with him,” Hamil offered.

The tiefling’s face darkened, and he turned away, snarling something in a language that Geran didn’t know. He kicked at the ground and slashed his weapon through the air in frustration. “You led them right to this place! Aesperus never could have removed the book from the Lathanderian’s barrow by himself. You have delivered his prize to him, you fools!”

“The Verunas were searching barrows all over the Highfells,” Hamil retorted angrily. “Sooner or later, they would have found the right one. Don’t blame us because you didn’t find it before we did. For that matter, I’d like to know how you found us here too.”

“I followed the Verunas. I was going to let them remove the book then take it from them.” He glared at Hamil. “Your meddling has cost me six months of labor. You halfwits have no idea what you’ve done!”

Geran decided to let the sorcerer’s sharp words pass for the moment. “This is the second time I’ve met you on the doorstep of a barrow,” he said. “I am Geran Hulmaster, of the harmach’s family, and we have laws against disturbing burial mounds in these lands. Who are you? And what do you want with Aesperus’s book?”

The tiefling calmed himself with a visible effort, and looked back to Geran and Hamil. “I am Sarth Khul Riizar,” he answered. “My interest in the Infiernadex is my own affair. But if Aesperus has found it at last, I doubt that I will ever be able to lay my hands on it. He is a foe beyond my strength.”

“We’re in your debt, Sarth Khul Riizar,” said Geran. “Your arrival distracted the Veruna men from the task of figuring out how they were going to kill us.”

“Such was not my intent,” the sorcerer said bitterly. “Still, I suppose you made yourself useful in the fight, and you have my thanks for that.” He frowned at the two companions again, then shook his head and muttered a spell under his breath. With a single bound he leaped into the sky and shot off eastward over the fells. In a moment he was completely out of their sight.

“Did you hear that? We made ourselves useful,” Hamil said. He sighed and looked around. A cold drizzle began to fall. “Ah, wouldn’t you know it? Our horses ran off with theirs.”

“Rosestone is three or four hours off by foot,” Geran said. He sheathed his sword and took a deep breath. “If we start now, I think we can be there before sunup.”