The Fire's Stone

Seventeen

"We go through his front gate? That's it?"

"That's it," Darvish agreed, watching the few remaining stars disappear in the spreading gray of dawn. "And we keep going until we get The Stone."

"Not much of a plan." Aaron closed his pouch and then settled the belt around his waist. Although he'd been up for much of the night, he'd found no information at all on the Most Wise Palaton's house or grounds or habits. Sources that made it a point to know who held every item of worth in the city, and how easy those items of worth were to obtain, knew nothing and expressed a distinct lack of interest in knowing more. Nor did they question their lack of interest which to Aaron best indicated the Most Wise Palaton's abilities. "You know, we'll probably die."

"I know Ischia will definitely die unless I, we, bring back The Stone." The last star went out and he turned from the window. "I haven't been much of a prince up until now, but if I have to balance my life against Ischia..." He let his voice trail off, took a deep breath, and started again. "I can't ask either of you to come with me. This isn't your fight."

"The One it isn't!" Chandra snapped. "Nine Wizards of the Nine created The Stone to keep Ischia safe and now some other wizard has run off with it. As a Wizard of the Nine I should think that involves me." Her tone dared either of them to suggest it didn't.

"You could die," Darvish reiterated, bluntly.

"I could've died any number of times since I started on this, this..." She frowned and searched for the right words. Adventure, sounded as if she weren't taking it seriously enough and only bards could use quest with a straight face. "... rescue mission. If I die attempting to retrieve The Stone, at least my death will have meaning." Drawing herself up, she tossed her braid back over her shoulder. "I'll die like a Wizard of the Nine."

At any other time Darvish would have smiled, or laughed outright at such a bombastic pronouncement, but he knew she meant it so he only inclined his head and said, "Thank you." The prince was glad of the wizard. He stood less than no chance without her along. The man, as much as he wished her to be safely out of it, was glad of her company.

He turned to Aaron. Pale gray eyes regarded him steadily, and Aaron's expression seemed to indicate that the option of not going didn't apply to him. Between one heartbeat and the next Darvish realized it didn't. And why.

Nine Above, he... I mean, I... We...

"Why not wait until night?" His eyes now hooded and his expression carefully blank, Aaron bent to buckle on a sandal.

"It wouldn't make any difference," Chandra broke in. Any more long, soulful, silent looks between those two and she was going to bash their heads together. "Palaton has The Stone. I've felt its power and I know what I could do with it." Cautiously, she tested her focus; it was tender but no longer painful although the power of The Stone was a continuous background thrum. "Night, day; it won't matter to him."

"Then we don't wait." Darvish strapped on the small guardsman's buckler. "We go, now."

Aaron nodded. "Then if everyone knows we're coming, this is how I suggest we get through the gate..."

Back in the center of the city, the bell in the temple tower rang twice and it was officially dawn. At each of Tivolic's five gates, guards gave the go-ahead to brawny young men who put their backs to the windlasses that would open the city for another day.

The senior guard at the North Gate yawned, scratched at the placed where his leather jerkin bit into his armpit and wondered why they bothered. What with the houses of the rich stretching along the river and the houses of the not-so-rich stretching along the road, not to mention the new temple that had just gone up, there were almost as many buildings outside the city as in it. He squinted east where streaks of pink and gray were giving way to blue and the great golden ball of the sun seemed to be sitting in the middle of the Duce Florintyn's olive groves. Then he squinted up the long empty length of the North Road and sighed. Give him the East Gate any day. At least the steady stream of market traffic kept a man awake.

Yawning, he wandered back in under the wall and propped his shoulders against the cool stone. The first of what would soon become a steady stream of men and women headed out to a day of service amid the estates of the wealthy. A heartbeat later he jerked erect and tried to yank the night's creases out of his tunic.

"M—most Wise." Frantically, he motioned his partner over. Two years seniority or not, he wasn't going to face a Wizard of the Fourth on his own. It was the same wizard who had stood at the gate the day before, he noted. Not that that helped.

She stared at them both with barely concealed disdain, not so much angry at them as at the circumstances that ordered her out to this gate at dawn for a second day when she'd have much rather still been in bed. The circumstances, however, were not available to be angry at and the guards were.

"If there's anything we can do, Most Wise."

"Stay out of my way. Both of you." She twitched her red-brown robes closer around her legs and sneered at three young women as they passed, their chattering silenced by her gaze. "You will continue to watch for the outlander and his companion."

It wasn't exactly a question, but the senior guard figured it would be safer to answer it than ignore it. "Yes, Most Wise. A small man with red hair and pale skin and a large man, dark but with blue eyes."

"I know what they look like, idiot!" she snarled. "Now take up posts and watch. And don't interfere with the servants." Her voice became a dangerous purr that put both men more in alliance with her. This anger was not only directed away from them but toward something they could understand. "One forbid that the merchant-princes should have to wait to have their asses wiped."

The servants hurried by in ones and twos, young and old, men and women, and the Wizard of the Fourth scowled at them all indiscriminately.

"The description is useless. Even an outlander and a drunk will have brains enough to disguise themselves when they know they are discovered." The two other wizards with her in the small office nodded in agreement.

"You will watch for the soul-link," Lord Rahman had replied mildly. "We know the soul-link is still in effect. You said so yourself; that you sensed it while trailing the ward."

"They could have had it removed since," she snapped.

"You three have assured me that you are the only Wizards of the Fourth in the city at present and as you all are in the service of His Most Gracious Majesty I assume you would inform me if you had been approached by enemies of the throne."

During the answering pause, she glanced sideways at her companions. Neither of them looked guilty. Nor, however, did they look about to speak.

"There was a wizard on the Gryphon," she said pointedly.

Lord Rahman tapped the parchment on the table before him. "A Wizard of the Seventh creates storms," he said, "not a wizard of the Fourth. If the wizard from the Gryphon survived the sea and if she still travels with the two we search for, she will not be able to remove the soul-link."

"Palaton could remove it." She put all the loathing felt for someone new and powerful into the name. That he had not become involved in the power struggles around the palace somehow made it worse.

"Palaton, as you well know, is a Wizard of the Nine and is not relevant to this discussion." The genial sarcasm left his voice and it grew cold. "I have had enough argument, Most Wise. If you wish to leave His Gracious Majesty's service, tell me now. If not, you will keep watch at the gates to ensure that the king's enemies do not leave the city should they evade the patrols now searching for them."

"There are three of us and five gates." Her voice was equally cold. Wizards of the Fourth feared no man but neither did she wish to find a new patron.

"You will watch at River, North, and Dawn Gates."

"Day and night?"

"No. "Lord Rahman smiled tightly. He hated dealing with wizards. "At night you may rest. The gates are locked then, after all."

That had been two nights ago and this was her second morning staring into the stupid common faces scurrying out to their stupid common jobs. Carefully, she rehearsed the words of the binding spell and tied and untied knots in the bit of string that went with it.

"Let them come through this gate," she prayed to her stern god, "and they'll pay for every bit of discomfort I've had to endure."

"This is stupid!"

"Milady, please."

"I will not be quiet. This is stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

The Wizard of the Fourth watched curiously as a young woman of obvious middle-class merchant lineage approached the gate. Beside her scurried a small, harried man in a clerk's robe that almost exactly matched in color the nondescript brown of his hair. Following the required two paces behind was a private guard, listening to the conversation of his betters with every sign of enjoyment. The wizard frowned. A small man and a large one. She reached out with power. No soul-link.

"If Father wants his business blessed, why can't he go to the temple we always go to?"

"The oracle, milady..." The small man kept his voice low and soothing. It seemed to have no effect. As they came closer, the wizard saw he had cut himself shaving and a tiny piece of cloth still adhered to his narrow jaw. The shape of his face declared he had outland blood, but in a city that depended heavily on trade, so did a large part of the population.

"Of course, the oracle." Her voice dripped with loudly expressed scorn. "A priest tells Father that all signs point to the new temple and I have to get up at the crack of dawn and walk forever out into the country! I think it's just to get Father's money out there to pay for having built it!"

The wizard tended to agree with the sentiment. In her experience, money commanded most of the oracles read by priests. The large man, as though aware of her interest, caught her eye and winked. Well, he certainly has nothing to hide. The guilty—guilty of anything—did not make themselves known to Wizards of the Fourth. She scanned his tight leathers appreciatively. And he certainly isn't hiding much either. His eyes, she noted—large eyes, long-lashed—were brown. A soft inviting brown.

"Milady, please, lower your voice."

"Why?"

"People are sleeping."

"So?"

The wizard's frown deepened. There was something about the girl she didn't like... Not entirely certain why, she reached out again with power.

And slid right into the power signature that had been hovering over the city and on the edge of every wizard's consciousness for a double nineday. Palaton! How dare he interfere with her work! She would have words to say with Lord Rahman about this.

Furious and fuming, she glared at the backs of the girl and her companions as they walked up the North Road toward the gleaming bulk of the new temple. One last, "This is stupid!" drifted back. Come to think of it, it was pretty obvious what she didn't like about the girl.

"I wish you joy of her," she muttered at the two men and began devising suitably scathing epithets about the Most Wise Palaton to deliver to Lord Rahman.

"You were right, Aaron."

"Of course, he was right." Chandra tried to convince her heart it could now start beating more slowly and fought the urge to turn and see if the Wizard of the Fourth still watched them. She had no real understanding of what she had done to the wizard's probe; somehow she had slid it through her own channels and into The Stone and done it without the wizard noticing. As it would only demand explanations she couldn't give, she decided not to tell Aaron and Darvish. "My father says that if you're going to hire an expert," she gave her brightly colored cotton sash a tug just to have something to do with her hands, "the least you can do is take his advice. No one would have believed we were servants and even if they did, you'd look ridiculous trying to sneak out with a sword."

"We're through the gate," Darvish told her acerbically, wiping damp palms against his thighs. "You can stop babbling now."

"Babbling? Huh! I was great." She glared up at him. "All you had to do was look big and mean."

"We were lucky," Aaron told them shortly. He realized that their stretched nerves found release in the bickering, but he couldn't listen to it any longer. He'd give his right arm for something, anything, resembling a plan.

They walked in silence for a time, then Chandra spit out the end of her braid and said, "I wonder why he hasn't tried to stop us."

Aaron shrugged. "We haven't been a threat."

"Or he doesn't think we're a threat at all." Chandra frowned. She hated not being taken seriously.

"A point in our favor," Darvish mused, loosening his sword in its sheath as they arrived at their destination. "He's overconfident."

"Or he's right." Aaron squinted up at the property's double gates, the delicate filigree bathed in the pale gold light of the rising sun. It didn't look like a gate designed to keep people out.

The gate was unlocked, not surprising as the thin decorative metal wouldn't have held against a determined assault. To their surprise, it was also unwarded.

As far as Aaron could see, the garden appeared empty. The frenzied barking of a dog sounded down the road and from beyond the wizard's house came the constant mutter of the river. Metallic wind chimes danced in morning breezes and rang an almost tuneful cacophany. Tall lilies rustled along the path. Nothing looked threatening. Nothing sounded threatening. Yet the knowledge of threat hung so precisely over Palaton's estate that Aaron felt he could draw a line across the gateway to define it. He hated working without a plan.

"Shouldn't we go over the wall?" Chandra whispered.

Aaron shrugged. "If he knows we're coming, why make it more difficult for ourselves?"

Chandra shuddered as she passed between the carved pillars of pale stone that bracketed the gateway. The signature of The Stone was now so overpowering she could see it, pulsing red-gold, if she closed her eyes. Almost, she could see it with them open. And she wanted it. The desire was so sudden and so strong that for a heartbeat it was all there was in the world.

It took nine Wizards of the Nine nine years to create the artifact. And, oh, what I could do with it.

"Chandra? Are you all right?"

Darvish's soft question brought her back to the garden and she turned her head just enough to see his worried frown. Unsure of her voice, she managed a vaguely reassuring smile. She didn't want him getting the wrong idea.

Of course, I'm all right. Why wouldn't I be? I'm not the one with the problems.

The wide drive curved slightly northward from the gate to the door, the crushed limestone already reflecting back the early morning light. As Darvish unbuckled his sword belt, he squinted, marking the distance they'd have to travel. No obstacles. Not likely. He took a deep breath and tightened his right hand around the warm leather of the scabbard.

The drive was untrapped. Aaron realized that wasn't unusual, not even the most paranoid of homeowners wanted to risk sending legitimate visitors into a spiked pit, but it made him nervous. He longed for the night and shadows to wrap him about in obscurity. This reminded him too much of his father's attacks on neighboring keeps which usually began with smashing down any barricades and moved on to mass slaughter by both sides. What was a thief doing here, in the light of day?

"You're too good a thief, Aaron, my lad."

"Good enough for this, Faharra?" He flexed damp fingers. "I doubt it."

Chandra fought the urge to say, "It's too quiet," or something else equally inane and reached into her pocket for the handful of rice she'd gotten from the kitchen of The Gallows. Rice was not the usual medium for the spell, but it was the only thing resembling a grain or a seed available. Murmuring under her breath, she began to pour it from one hand to the other.

They'd rounded the curve of the drive when the six fighters stepped out of nothing.

Darvish drew his sword and tossed the scabbard and belt to one side.

"Now then, lad, let's have none of that." A grizzled veteran stepped out of the line of guards and beamed genially, her expression of goodwill lessened somewhat by the angle of her nose and a scar that puckered one cheek. "There's six of us and only three of you. One of you," she amended after a swift examination of Aaron and Chandra. "We'd rather not have to kill you, so why not just throw down your sword?"

"We'd rather not have to kill you either," Darvish told her with his most charming smile. He wondered how much longer Chandra needed for her spell and how long he'd last if she wasn't ready soon. He really didn't want to kill anyone but suspected the guards would not be fighting under that handicap. "So why don't you just let us by and we'll forget we ever met."

She shook her head. "Sorry, lad."

As they charged, Chandra threw the rice.

Four guards fell.

"Two to one," Darvish said softly as, moving too quickly to stop, the older woman and a very young man closed with him.

He caught the first strike on his blade, the second on his buckler. His first and second blows were blocked as well. After a moment, the young man stumbled, a long line of red running diagonally across his thigh. He swore and swung around to protect his injured leg.

"Sleep," Chandra told him, and threw the last of the rice in his face.

Like his fellows, he was asleep before he hit the ground.

Teeth clenched against his weight, Chandra pulled him clear.

Aaron watched as a vicious backhanded swipe sliced into the rim of Darvish's buckler. He should help. The curved swords were useless to him, but there were daggers in plenty on the guards. His father preferred the hand ax but had trained him with daggers as well.

""You've the best eye and steadiest hand in the keep, Aaron, my son. I'm proud of you."

"I don't want you to be proud of me, Father."

Daggers belonged to the past.

Darvish, used to exploiting the advantage of being a left-handed swordsman, found everything he threw blocked with a grim intensity and a joyless smile. The woman was good. She was very good.

He grunted in pain and looked down with some surprise as her sword slashed through his leathers and slid along his ribs.

She was better than he was.

He fell with the blow and came up under her guard.

Almost.

The last four inches of his edge took her cleanly across the throat, drawing another joyless smile below the first.

Her eyes had just enough time to register disbelief before she died.

"Darvish! You're hurt!"

"I know." He drew in a long shuddering breath and gingerly touched his side. There was less blood than he expected, but it hurt like all Nine Above. "I don't suppose you can heal it?"

Chandra blushed. "No, I..."

"Never mind." He tried a grin that didn't quite work. "You took out five of them. You've paid your way."

Aaron moved silently to Darvish's side. The wound was long but shallow and angled in such a way that it didn't cut off the use of his arm. He'd seen worse, but not on Darvish and he found that made all the difference. "Take off your sash," he commanded Chandra over his shoulder.

She frowned but obeyed. Aaron was a thief, not a fighter, but she still thought he should have done something to help. After all, he'd helped the last time.

Shaking out the long piece of fabric, Aaron wound it quickly around Darvish's ribs, up over his shoulder, and secured the fringed end. "Better?" he asked, forcing his hands not to tremble at the pain he knew he'd caused.

Darvish carefully raised his right arm to block an imaginary opponent. "Not really," he winced, sucking air through his teeth.

Aaron's lips thinned, but he tried to match Darvish's matter-of-fact tone. "At least you won't bleed to death." He slid out of the clerk's robe. "Shall we get on with this?"

Wiping his sword with the offered robe, his movements exaggeratedly precise, Darvish nodded. "Let's."

Chandra decided to allow them the look they then exchanged. They'd kept it short and she figured they both needed it.

The door to the house was locked but whether in response to the fight or because of the hour they had no way of knowing. Aaron loved the complicated mechanical locks of the rich. They gave access to a thief the way a lowly bolt or bar did not. He slipped a long flexible tool from his pouch and bent to work.

In six heartbeats, maybe seven, the door swung open.

The interior was dim and cool, light passing through the thick stone latticework that made up the front wall and lying in broken patterns on the tile floor.

Palaton smiled into the mirror that showed, not his reflection, but the three at his door. "I will call the girl to me," he told his companion, running his hands gently around the gilded edges of the mirror's frame. "And then you will put the other two away where they can be forgotten."

"Where to now?" Darvish whispered.

Touching the red-gold pulse that had wrapped around her like a cloak as she passed through the door, Chandra let her need for The Stone answer. "Up," she sighed. "We have to go up."

"All right." He made his way to the nearest set of folding doors. "Then we look for stairs."

The very proper servant about to open the doors from the other side was as astonished as Darvish, but the prince recovered faster. Throwing his sword to his right hand, he lunged forward, yanked the man against his uninjured side, and clapped a massive palm over a mouth just about to open in a terrified yell.

' "Now what do we do with him?" he asked, breathing a little heavily as the motion jerked his wound around.

"Slit his throat."

"Shut up, Father."

Chandra stepped forward, feeling as though she moved through a dream, and touched the man just between his rolling eyes. "Sleep," she told him, and wasn't surprised when he slumped against Darvish's hold, although without a grain or seed to help focus and form the power the spell shouldn't have worked. "The Stone," she said by way of explanation, and, stepping over limp legs, followed the call deeper into the house.

"You'd think a wizard would protect his people against things like this," Darvish muttered as he let the sleeping servant slide the rest of the way down his body and onto the floor.

Chandra paused and looked back at him. "Why? Wizards aren't in the habit of breaking into each other's houses. Do you arm your servants against attacks by other princes?"

Darvish looked a little concerned at the defensive tone in her voice and Aaron's brows were high as he moved to Darvish's side, asking, "Should I scout ahead?"

"No, we stay together. We've enough potential for disaster without dividing it by three."

Aaron nodded, that made sense to him, but Chandra only shrugged, turned, and once again began following the call of The Stone. Exchanging worried looks, the two men followed.

Drawn by the inner call of The Stone, Chandra walked the length of the new room and went through the double latticed doors at its far end, heading deeper into the house. Eyes straight ahead, completely unaware of her surroundings, she crossed another room and came face-to-face with a large mirror in a gilded frame. There had been mirrors in both of the previous rooms she realized suddenly; they were important although she couldn't remember how or why.

The mirror hung in a wide corridor that ran the width of the house. It took her a moment to realize that her expected reflection was not present, just a broad expanse of silvered glass with a red-gold fire burning in the heart of it. She moved closer. The fire grew.

"Chandra, be careful!" Darvish didn't like the way Chandra stared at her reflection nor did he much like the way she advanced on it. His own reflection stared back at him, brows drawn down in worry.

"I know what I'm doing," Chandra said without turning. The red-gold fire had become a jewel that spun just beyond her reach. She moved closer and laid one hand against the cool glass. "I'm a Wizard of the Nine." If she just reached a little, she knew she could get it.

"Chandra!"

As fast as the two men moved, the mirror moved faster. By the time they reached it, only a red-gold glow remained and that too faded, leaving them staring at their aghast reflections.

Darvish raised his sword to strike at the glass, but Aaron grabbed his arm and dragged it down. "Dar, no! If she's in the mirror and you smash it, you may kill her. If she's gone through it, you may trap her where she is." He held his grip until the trembling left Dar's muscles and they began to relax, then he released the sword arm and stepped back.

Breathing heavily, nostrils flaring, Darvish jerked away from the glass that seemed to mock him by being nothing more than it appeared. "She isn't dead." He wouldn't allow her to be dead. "We find Palaton. And if she's been hurt, we make him pay." But she isn't dead. He started down the corridor, coldly furious at Palaton, at himself. "I should've warned her. He brought The Stone to Ytaili with a mirror. I knew he used them. I should've warned her."

Aaron fell into step behind him. "I should have warned her, too." And with the words, the walls had slammed up again, fully formed, trapping emotion behind them. They'd been a part of him for so long and he'd been without them for such a short time that he couldn't knock them down. Nor did he try. After all, he'd failed Chandra. "As much my fault as yours."

"No. The responsibility was mine." Too wrapped up in his own anger and guilt he didn't hear the echo of the void in Aaron's voice. His greatest fear was that Palaton had taken Chandra hostage and would offer to trade her life for The Stone. She knew that she could die but, Nine Above, don't make it my choice.

Their sandals whispered quietly against the tiles as they hurried along the corridor, deeper into the house. At a cross corridor, they paused, listened, but heard nothing more than their own labored breathing and the soft chink of metal against stone as Darvish rested his sword point against the floor.

"That way," he said, and pointed. "Keep moving away from the door. We'll have to pass another mirror. Don't look in it."

But they both glanced quickly as they sped past. First Darvish, then Aaron. Hoping they'd see Chandra staring out at them. Terrified they'd see Chandra staring out at them.

They saw their own reflection scurrying single file down the hall of a wizard's house, nothing more.

When Aaron's image stepped beyond the mirror's range, its surface grew brightly silver and a single ripple ran top to bottom down the glowing length. The man-shaped creature that stepped through into the corridor should have been too large to fit between the borders of the gilded frame. The floor should have trembled under its weight. Aaron should have felt its fetid breath on the back of his neck.

It fit easily through the borders of the frame.

It made no more noise than the fall of dust in an empty room.

It had no breath to give it away.

Aaron felt the hair on the back of his neck rise and he half turned. His mind had no time to understand what he saw before blackness claimed him.

Darvish heard the sound of heels thudding against wood. He whirled about in time to see Aaron's feet disappearing into the mirror.

"NO!"

Diving forward, sprawling his full height along the floor, he grabbed out desperately as the ripple shimmered up through the glass, bottom to top, and screamed as a quarter inch of his index finger was sliced cleanly off. Blood sprayed against the mirror as he snatched his hand back and bundled the fringed end of Chandra's sash around it. Then he sat for a moment on the floor and tried to calm his ragged breathing. Panic would help neither his companion nor himself.

He'd screamed more from Aaron's loss than the loss of his fingertip, the latter having happened too quickly and too cleanly to do more than send a jolt up his arm. The pain radiating out from it now, sending every muscle from wrist to shoulder into weak spasms, more than made up for that, but it remained nothing beside Aaron's loss and the feeling that an essential part of him had been ripped away.

Gingerly, he unwrapped the end of the sash. From what he could see through fresh blood welling up, the mirror had cut through flesh and nail and bone, crushing nothing, merely evening the index finger with the two flanking it. Thank the One, it's not my sword hand. Bracing his sword against the wall, he awkwardly cut free a piece of cloth. More awkwardly still, he got it around his finger and tied it with a bit of fringe, using his teeth to pull the knot tight and put pressure on the wound. The rough bandage was already soaked through, but it was the best he could do and he wouldn't waste more time on it. Palaton's servants must have heard the scream and above all else he had to avoid getting into a fight he couldn't win.

Finding Palaton is still the best idea, he thought, standing and wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his sword hand. Find the stairs, I find Palaton. He started on in the direction he'd been going, deeper into the house.

The corridor ended in a brilliantly executed mosaic and another cross corridor, both of which showed the silver shiver of a mirror centered in their end walls.

Bugger the Nine! He flattened against the tiles. Perhaps if I keep my reflection out of the glass...

Hearing voices to his right, he sidled cautiously toward a pair of latticed doors, folded open. The sunlight spilling through them bathed a heavy wooden door set in the opposite wall with bright gold. Riding the light came the sharp scent of fresh cut oranges and a quiet conversation.

"... less tense if you're going to serve in a wizard's kitchen, boy." The voice was a woman's, the tone dry and almost disapproving.

"But I tell you, I did hear someone scream." The last word cracked and jumped an octave.

"And I tell you, unless they're screaming about the food, ignore them. Get me a larger bowl."

Silently, Darvish moved out into the sunlight. Surely there would be stairs by the kitchens to take food up to the wizard. He could see ovens and the end of a large table, but the cook and her helper were out of sight and as long as he couldn't see them... He studied the latch of the wooden door and paused. The hinges were metal. Could he risk the noise of the door opening giving him away? Could he risk not opening the door when the stairs he sought might be behind it?

And then the decision became moot as he stepped away from the wall and his reflection touched the closer of the two mirrors.

It shivered.

In one fluid movement, he crossed the hall and flung the door open with his mutilated hand.

The stairs behind it stretched down.

For less than a heartbeat, dust motes danced as the brilliant sunlight spilled into the darkness below. Then the door was closed again with Darvish behind it, forehead resting against the heavy wood, straining with all he had left to hear the wizard's guardian approach.

He heard nothing except his blood pounding a distraction in his ears and began to think that he had moved in time. Then the feel of the of the corridor changed. The fine hair on the back of Darvish's neck rose. Something was out there. Something...

Muscles tensed, he prepared to throw himself forward the instant the door began to move. If the One was with him, he could slam the heavy wood against his opponent and gain a slight advantage.

And then the feeling went away.

But it didn't go far.

"What are you doing in here?" The cook's voice rose to such a volume that it defeated walls, corridor, and door, and Darvish heard her as though she stood beside him. "Go back to your master! Go on! Get!"

Her voice grew louder as she pursued the creature out of the kitchen. "Oh, no, right off of this level! You go back into your nasty mirror before I take a broom to you."

There was a long pause while the heaviness lifted out of the air.

"That's better." Although he heard no sound, Darvish imagined her dusting off her hands. "Wizard promised me no magic in my kitchen and I'll hold him to that promise, by the One. There's nothing to be afraid of, boy." Her voice trailed off into reassurances.

Slowly, very slowly, Darvish pushed the door open and squinted into the sunlight. The corridor was empty. No creature of magic stood waiting for him. Weak with reaction, he leaned against the cool wall of the stairwell and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Up from the depths came the unmistakable smell of wine.

He swallowed and found himself descending.

So there's wine. That doesn't mean Aaron is not there as well. A wine cellar is a perfectly logical place to hide captives.

Another step, and then another, and then two more. His head remained in sunlight, his feet in shadow. Three more steps and he waited while his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Enough light followed him down the stairs that he was able to make out a small table holding a squat pitcher and a mug. Against the far wall he could just barely differentiate the rounded shadows of barrels in the darkness.

The last step and the cool stone of the cellar floor pressed up against his sandals. The air didn't so much smell of wine, as it was wine, and Darvish drew in great lungfuls of it. The pain of his wounds receded before a need so strong that his sword lay on the table and the pitcher was in his hand before he was aware of moving.

One drink, to give me strength. I've lost a lot of blood. Nine Above, surely I deserve that much. Perhaps the wine would fill the aching emptiness where Aaron had been.

Working by touch, ignoring the torment that rode up his arm when he knocked his fingers against the wood, he shoved the thumb of his wounded hand through the ring on the cover of the first barrel and yanked it up. The smell of the wine grew thicker, wrapping like a heavy blanket around Darvish's head. He plunged the pitcher into the darkness and brought it up dripping.

To prove he still had control, he carried it untasted back to the table and filled the mug. Then he sat on the bottom step and raised the mug to his lips.

Just one. To give me strength.