The Magestone

30 Elsenar—events at Narvok’s abandoned lair, recalled subsequently by Kasarian due to their mental linkage (24th—25th Day, Moon of Chordosh)

Time—an unbelievable span of time had elapsed since my duel with Narvok. It seemed to me only moments ago that my fateful struggle with the Dark Adept had aroused the Force which had lain dormant in this place since the Elder Days. Once it had lashed out, expelling Narvok through his Gate and rending me in twain, it had sunk back into unreachable somnolence, stranding this wisp of me in a bodiless condition, unable to move or speak. After an immeasurable interval, a woman had intruded into my place of confinement. By the Power of my jewel, I attracted her attention, and obtained her permission to employ a spell to breed a Child of my Mind capable of wielding my jewel to release me at some future time. When she, perforce, departed with the jewel, it was impossible for my ensorcelled remnant to gauge how long I hung suspended in the darkness.

It was not until my mind sensed the approach of my jewel that I roused from my torpor. I was still totally immured, but my awareness waxed as the stone drew ever closer. By the surge of Power, I was alerted when the jewel’s bearer entered the chamber. I hailed my jewel joyfully—as a vital part of my mind, it invigorated me by its closeness, enabling me to assume at least partial visibility. I could not, however, take physical possession of the stone, for I had no substance, no means to touch or be touched. Neither could I speak orally to the young man whose blood called to my blood. But why was his hair stained dark when he was obviously a son of Aliz stock?

I summoned my jewel to leave his hand and approach me. Its energy warmed my mental essence like life-giving rays of the sun. I drew upon its strength, and bespoke the young man mentally, in the speech of the Alizon I had known. At first, he seemed not to understand me, then he gave a great cry, and fell to his knees.

I realized that he must be frightened by my mindspeech. Disturbed that he should fear me, I urged him to rise, employing the intimate mindspeech that transcends all spoken language. I explained to him that my apparent revival was merely temporary; that I must take immediate action to reunite the shards of my magically cloven self or else I would soon disperse into nothingness.

In order to achieve the swiftest transfer of information, I requested that he allow me to touch his mind directly, thus permitting me access to his memories. As in my previous experience with the Lady Veronda of the Dales, I could not and would not act without the willful consent of my respondent.

The young man did not reply to me vocally—indeed, his body trembled as he stepped forward toward me, but he faced me despite his understandable trepidation, and firmly nodded his assent.

By the Power of my jewel, I reached into his memories. To my initial surprise, I learned that this Kasarian of Alizon was not the Child of my Mind whom I had expected to rescue me; that child, borne by the Lady Veronda, had been a female named Mereth. Through Kasarian’s eyes, I viewed her as he had last beheld her, abed, recovering from grave injuries she had suffered while risking her life to retrieve my jewel. Alarmed, I scanned Kasarian’s store of background knowledge. Mereth had been born in the Dales nearly seventy-six years ago, but Kasarian recalled my activities in the land of Alizon as having occurred over a thousand years in the past!

I was deeply disheartened that my expulsion of the treacherous Shorrosh and my destruction of the Gate to the home-world of the Aliz should still be regarded by Alizon’s current inhabitants as a betrayal of such magnitude that they dated their very calendar from that event. Still, I had been aware of the cruel flaws in the nature of the very first transferees from Aliz. I could not be truly surprised—although I was filled with regret—that the descendants of the folk I had originally rescued should have preserved, and even apparently intensified the deplorable qualities that so marred the character of their foresires. On the other hand, I was distinctly gratified that I could detect no taint of the Dark in Kasarian. Indeed, ironically, because of their burning sense of betrayal by Shorrosh and me, the Alizonders had denounced and rejected magic with such single-minded ferocity that their culture ever since, for all its appalling faults, bore no trace of influence by the Dark . . . until . . . until now!

With increasing dismay, I concentrated upon the nascent threat posed by Baron Gurborian’s schemes to seek alliance with surviving forces of the Dark yet active in Escore. I viewed the physical duel in which Gurborian had fittingly received his death wound from his own poisoned blade. I saw how Kasarian had recovered my jewel from Gurborian’s body, and had then carried Mereth through my private postern to Lormt, where awaited a group of scholars, champions of the Light, anxious to thwart any attack by Escore upon the lands to the south of Alizon.

I surveyed Kasarian’s knowledge and opinions of each of his companions at Lormt; theirs was an uneasy relationship forged by the necessity to defend against a common enemy. To my great sorrow, I learned of the war waged by Alizon against the Dales. Kasarian, while not of an age to have taken part in the failed invasion, still considered Alizon to be at enmity with both the Dales-folk and the descendants of those devoted to the Light who had fled from Escore and now called themselves Estcarpians.

There can be no deception in direct mind touch. I was instantly aware of Kasarian’s tumultuous feelings toward me—how he was both fearful of and repelled by my magical Power, yet at the same time, he cherished some hope that I might reward him for freeing me. He recoiled from the possibility that I might return to Alizon and seize total control there, but he also entertained the speculation that I might conceivably aid his Lormt faction in devising a plan to prevent any survivors adhering to Gurborian’s faction from allying with Escore’s Dark Adepts.

I ranged through the brief span of Kasarian’s life experiences, tapping his memories of his father—murdered, I learned, by Gurborian. Kasarian’s lineage extended back directly to Krevonel, the son I had never seen, borne by my beloved Kylaina so many centuries ago. Through all the intervening generations, echoes of her singular beauty had been preserved—I glimpsed her again in the color of Kasarian’s eyes, and in the grace of his carriage.

I longed to stay in this new time, so far removed from the age I had known, and yet similarly menaced by the deadly blight of the Dark. Even as that desire swelled within me, I knew I dared delay no longer. From the core of my being surged a sense of overpowering necessity to hasten toward that unknown Gate beyond which the remaining fragment of me languished in aching incompleteness.

As Kasarian’s mind had lain open before me, so would my thoughts during this linkage become accessible to him upon later reflection. There could be no secrets between us. I knew that I must work quickly, before my strength ebbed. Using my jewel’s energy, I dissolved our linkage gently, so that Kasarian would suffer no lasting ill effects.