Cadderly purposely avoided looking at the guardsman as he moved through the short tunnel and under the raised portcullis leading out of the lakeside town. All along his route to the western gate the young scholar had observed people of every station and every demeanor, and the variety of shadowy images he had seen leaping from their shoulders had nearly overwhelmed him. Again the song of Deneir played in his thoughts, as though he had subconsciously summoned it, and again, aurora remained the only identifiable term. Cadderly could not make sense of it all; he feared that this new insight would drive him mad.
He grew more at ease when he had put the bustle of Carradoon behind him and was walking along the hedge-and tree-lined roads, with nothing more to attract his attention than the chatter of birds and the overhead rustle of squirrels gathering their winter stores.
“Is mine the curse of the hermits?” he asked himself aloud. “That it is!” he proclaimed loudly, startling a nearby squirrel that had frozen in place on the camouflaging gray bark of a tree. The rising volume of Cadderly’s voice sent the critter hop-skipping up the tree, where it froze again, not even its bushy tail twitching.
“Well, it is,” Cadderly cried to the rodent in feigned exasperation. “All those poor, wretched, solitary souls, so frowned upon by the rest of us. They are not hermits by choice. They possess this same vision that haunts me, and it drives them mad, drives them to where they cannot bear the sight of another intelligent thing.”
Cadderly moved to the base of the tree to better view the beast. “I see no shadows leaping from your shoulders, Mr. Gray,” he called. “You have no hidden desires, no cravings beyond those you obviously seek to fill.”
“Unless there be a lady squirrel about!” came a cry from down the path. Cadderly nearly leaped out of his boots. He spun about to see a large, dirty man dressed in ragged, ill-fitting clothes and boots whose toes had long ago worn away.
“A lady squirrel would get his mind from those nuts,” the stubble-faced man continued, advancing easily down the road.
Cadderly unconsciously brought his ram-headed walking stick up in front of him. Thieves were common on the roads close to the town, especially in this season, with winter fast approaching.
“But, then...” the large man continued, putting a finger upon his lower lip in a contemplative gesture. Cadderly noted that he wore mismatched fingerless gloves, one black, one brown leather. “If the lady was about, the squirrel would still have no ‘hidden desires,’ since the unabashed beast would seek to fill whatever his heart deemed necessary, the call of his belly or the call of his loins.
“I’d be one to choose the loins, eh?” the dirty man said with a lascivious wink.
Cadderly blushed slightly and nearly laughed aloud, though he still hadn’t figured out what to make of this well-spoken vagabond, and he still wasn’t comfortable near the dirty man. He peered closer, trying to find a revealing shadow on the man’s shoulders. But Cadderly’s surprise had stolen the song fully, and nothing rested there, except the badly worn folds of an old woolen scarf.
“It is a fine day to be about, talking to the beasts,” the man went on, seeing no response forthcoming from Cadderly. “A pity, then, that I must get myself inside the gates of Carradoon, in the realm of smells more unpleasant, where high buildings hide the panorama of beauty so easily taken for granted on this most lovely of country roads.”
“You will not easily pass by the guards,” Cadderly remarked, knowing how carefully the city militiamen were protecting their home, especially with rumors of war brewing.
The vagabond opened a small pouch on the side of his rope belt and produce a single silver coin. “A bribe?” Cadderly asked,
“Admission,” the beggar corrected. “ ‘One must spend gold’—or silver, as the case may be—‘to make gold,’ goes the old saying. I will accept the lore as true, since I know I will indeed secure some gold once I am within the town’s wall.”
Cadderly studied the man more closely. He wore no insignia of any lawful guild, showed no signs of any money-making talents whatsoever. “A thief,” he stated flatly.
“Never,” the man asserted.
“A beggar?” Cadderiy asked, this word coming out with the same obvious venom.
The larger man clutched his chest and staggered back several steps, as though Cadderly had launched a dagger into his heart.
Now Cadderly did notice some shadows. He caught the flicker of a pained look beneath the man’s sarcastic, playful facade. He saw a woman on one shoulder, holding a small child, and an older child on the man’s other shoulder. The images were gone in an instant, and Cadderly noticed for the first time that the man had a slight limp and a blue-green bruise on his wrist just above the edge of the brown glove.
Of nausea nearly overwhelmed the young scholar; as he focused his senses, he felt the emanations of the disease clearly and knew beyond doubt why this intelligent, articulate man had sunk to his lowly station.
He was a leper.
“M-my pardon,” Cadderly stammered. “I did not know . . .”
“Does anyone . . . ever?” the large man asked, in a snarling voice. “I do not appreciate your pity, young priest of Deneir, but I’ll gladly accept your pittance.”
Cadderly clenched his walking stick tightly, mistaking the remark as a threat.
“You know of what I speak,” the beggar man said to him, “the coins you inevitably will throw my way to alleviate your guilt.”
Cadderly winced at the biting remark, but couldn’t deny his pity that one so intelligent had sunk so low. He was surprised, too, that the beggar had discerned his order, even though he wore his holy symbol prominently on the front of his wide-brimmed hat. The large man studied Cadderly intently as the tumult of emotions rolled through the young priest.
“Pig,” the man said with a sneer, to Cadderly’s surprise. “How terrible that one such as I should have sunk to the level of a street beggar!”
Cadderly bit his lip in the face of such dramatics.
“To wallow in the mud beside the wretches,” the man continued, throwing one arm out wide, the other still clutching at his mock-wounded chest.
He stopped suddenly in that pose and turned a confused expression Cadderly’s way. “Wretches?” he asked. “What do you know of them, arrogant priest? You, who are so intelligent— that is the weal of your order, is it not?
“Intelligence.” The beggar spat with distaste. “An excuse, I say, for those such as you. It is what separates you, what elevates you.” He eyed Cadderly dangerously and finished, deliberately, “It is what blinds you.”
“I do not deserve this!” Cadderly declared.
The man threw his hands above his head and blurted a mocking, incredulous shout. “Deserve?” he cried. He jerked the sleeve up on one arm, revealing a row of rotting, bruised skin.
“Deserve?” he asked again. “What, pray tell me, young priest who is so wise, do those kneeling before, and crawling from, the alleys of Carradoon deserve?”
Cadderly thought he would burst apart. He felt an angry energy building within him, gathering explosive strength. He remembered when he had awakened the trees in Shilmista, and when he had healed Tintagel, had held the elf wizard’s guts in while a similar energy had mended the garish wound. A page from the Tome of Universal Harmony flashed in Cadderly’s head, as clearly as if he held the open book before him, and he knew then the object of his rage. He eyed the bruises on the large man’s arm, filled his nostrils with the stench of the disease that had so tormented this undeserving man’s soul.
“Pieta pieta, dominus . . “ Cadderly began, reciting the chant as he read the words from the clear image in his mind.
“No!” the large man cried, charging ahead. Cadderly halted the chant and tried to throw up his arms to block, but the man was surprisingly fast and balanced for one so tall, and he caught hold of Cadderly’s clothing and shook the young priest thoroughly.
Cadderly saw an opening, could have jammed his walking stick up under the man’s chin. He knew, though, that the frustrated beggar meant him no real harm, and he was not surprised when the man released him, shoving him back a step,
“I could cure you!” Cadderly growled.
“Could you?” the man mocked. “And could you cure them?” he cried, waggling a finger toward the distant town. “Could you cure them all? Are all the world’s ills to fall before this young priest of Deneir? Call to the wretched, I say!” The beggar cried, whirling about and shouting to the four winds. “Line them up before this . . . this . . .” He searched for the word, his dirty lips moving silently. “This godsend!” he cried at last.
A nearby squirrel broke into a dead run along the branches across the path.
“I do not deserve this,” Cadderly said again, calmly.
His tone seemed infectious, for the large man dropped his hands to his sides immediately and his shoulders visibly slumped.
“No,” the leper agreed, “but accept it, I pray you, as but a small penance in a world filled with undeserved penance.”
Cadderly blinked away the moisture that suddenly came into his gray eyes. “What are their names?” he asked quietly.
The beggar looked at him curiously for a moment, then his lips curled up in his first sincere smile. “Jhanine, my wife,” he answered. “Toby, my son, and Millinea, my young daughter. None have shown signs of my infection as yet,” he explained, guessing Cadderly’s unspoken question. “I see them rarely—to deliver the pittance I have gained from the guilty arrogants of Carradoon.”
The beggar chuckled, seeing Cadderly’s blush. “My pardon,” he said, dipping into a low bow. “I, too, am sometimes blind, seeing the well and fortunate in a similar light.”
Cadderly nodded his acceptance of that inevitable—and excusable—fault. “What is your name?”
“Nameless,” the beggar answered without hesitation. “Yes, that is a good name for one such as me. Nameless-akin to all the other Namelesses huddled in the squalor between the towers of the wealthy.”
“You hold such self-pity?” Cadderly asked.
“Self-truth,” Nameless answered immediately.
Cadderly conceded the point. “I could cure you,” the young priest said again.
Nameless shrugged his shoulders. “Others have tried,” he explained, “priests from your own order, and those of Oghma as well. I went to the Edificant Library—of course I went to the library—when the signs first appeared.”
The mention of the Edificant Library brought an unconscious frown to Cadderly’s face. “I am not like the others,” he asserted more forcefully than he had intended.
The beggar smiled. “No, you’re not,” he agreed.
“Then you will accept my aid?”
Nameless did not relinquish his smile. “I will ... consider it,” he replied quietly. Cadderly caught an unmistakable glimmer of hope in his dark brown eyes, and saw a shadow appear atop the man’s shoulder, a shadow of the beggar himself, gaily tossing a small form—Millinea, he somehow knew—into the air and catching her. The shadow fell apart quickly, dissipating in the wind.
Cadderly nodded somewhat grimly, suspecting the dangers of false hopes for one in this man’s position. Suspecting the risks, but not truly understanding them, Cadderly now knew, for he was not, for all his sympathy, standing in the beggar man’s holey shoes.
The young priest tore the pouch from his belt. “Then accept this,” he said forcefully, tossing it to the large man.
Nameless caught it and eyed Cadderly curiously, but made no move to return the coin-filled purse. Here was an offering holding no false hopes, Cadderly understood, an offering of face value and nothing more.
“I am one of those arrogants,” Cadderly explained, “guilty, as you have accused.”
“And this will alleviate that guilt?” the beggar man asked, his eyes narrowing.
Cadderly couldn’t hold back his chuckle. “Hardly,” he replied, and he knew that if Nameless believed the purse would alleviate his guilt, then Nameless would have thrown it back at him. “Hardly a proper penance. I give it to you because you, and Jhanine, Toby, and Millinea, are more deserving of it than I, not for any lessening of the guilt. That guilt I must carry until I have learned better.” Cadderly cocked his head to the side as a thought came to him.
“Call the gold a tutor’s fee if that helps you to lessen your own guilt for waylaying one as innocent as me!” he said.
The beggar man laughed and bowed low. “Indeed, young priest, you are not like those of your order who greeted me at the library’s great door, those who were more concerned with their own failings to cure me than with the consequences of my ailment.”
That is why they failed, Cadderly knew, but he did not interrupt.
“It is a fine day!” Nameless went on. “And I pray you enjoy it.” He held up the purse and shook it. His whole body shaking in a joyful dance, he smiled at the loud jingle of coins. “Perhaps I will as well. To the Nine Hells with Carradoon’s stinking alleys this day!”
Nameless stopped his dance abruptly and stood stock-still, eyeing Cadderly gravely. Slowly, he extended his right hand, seemingly conscious, for the first time, of his dirty, fingerless glove.
Cadderly understood the action as a test, a test he was glad he could pass so easily. Without a thought for superstitious consequences, the young priest accepted the handshake.
“I pass by here often,” Cadderly said quietly. “Consider my offer of healing.”
The beggar man, too touched to reply verbally, nodded sincerely. He turned about and walked briskly away, his limp more pronounced, as though he no longer cared to hide it. Cadderfy watched him for few moments, then turned and continued away from Carradoon. He smiled as more squirrels scrabbled overhead, but he hardly looked up to see them.
It seemed to the young priest that the day had grown finer and less fine at the same time.
Nameless smiled as a squirrel nearly lost its balance on a small branch, catching hold and righting itself at the last moment. The beggar man tried to use that simple, natural movement as a symbol of what had just transpired between him and the curious young priest, viewing himself as the branch and Cadderly as the creature righting its course. The thought made the leper feel good, valuable, for the first time in a long, long while.
He couldn’t brood on it, though, and could hardly hope to meet enough people like this curious Cadderly, who would care to see their arrogance laid out before them. No, Nameless would have to continue as he had for more than a year, struggling daily to gain enough trinkets to keep his wife and children from starving.
He had at least a temporary reprieve. He tossed the purse into the air, caught it gingerly, and smiled again. It was indeed a fine day!
Nameless spun about, prepared to pay Jhanine and the children a long overdue visit, but his smile fast became a frown.
“So sorry to startle you, good friend,” said a puny man, his drooping, thick eyelids open only enough for Nameless to make out his small, dark eyes.
Nameless instinctively moved the coin-filled pouch out of sight and kept his arms in front of him.
“I am a leper,” he growled, using his disease as a threat.
The smaller man chuckled and gave a wheezing laugh that sounded more like a cough. “You think me a thief?” he asked, holding his hands out wide. Nameless blinked at the man’s curious gloves, one white, the other black. “As you can see, I carry no weapons,”the little man assured. ‘
“None openly,” Nameless admitted.
“I see we both wear a mixed set of gloves “ Ghost remarked. “Kindred spirits, eh?”
Nameless slipped his hands under the folds of his badly fitting clothes, embarrassed for some reason he did not understand. Kindred spirits? he thought. Hardly. The fine gloves this little man wore, matched or not, must have cost more than Nameless had seen in many months, the young priest’s pouch included.
“But we are,” Ghost asserted, noticing the frown.
“You are a beggar, then?” Nameless dared to ask. “Carradoon is but a mile down the road. I was going there myself. The take is always good.”
“But the young priest changed your mind?” the stranger asked. “Do tell me about that one.”
Nameless shrugged and shook his head slightly, hardly conscious of the movement. Ghost caught it, though, and the beggar man’s confusion told the wicked man much.
“Ah,” Ghost said, his arms still wide, “you do not know young Cadderly.”
“You do?”
“Of course,” Ghost replied, motioning to the pouch Nameless tried to hide. “Shouldn’t all those of our ilk know one as generous as Cadderly?”
“Then you are a beggar,” Nameless reasoned, relaxing a bit. There was an unspoken code among the people of squalor, an implied brotherhood.
“Perhaps,” Ghost answered cryptically. “I have been many things, but now I am a beggar man.” He wheezed another chuckle. “Or soon I will be,” he corrected. Nameless watched as the man unbuttoned the top of his surcoat and pulled the woolen folds aside.
“A mirror?” the beggar man muttered, then he said no more, transfixed by his own image in the silvery device.
Nameless felt the intrusion. He tried to pull away, but could not, held firmly by the strange magic. He saw nothing except for his own image, lined in black as though he had been transported to some other place, some dark, otherworldly place. Nameless tried desperately to look around at his surroundings, tried to make sense of them, find some familiarity.
He saw only his image.
He heard a clap, then he was moving, or he felt as though he was moving, even though he knew that his physical body had not stirred in the least. There came a brief, sharp pain as his spirit exited his body and floated helplessly toward the effeminate vessel that awaited it.
The pain came again.
Nameless blinked, consciously fighting against the heavy droop of his eyelids. He saw his own beggar’s image again, wearing gloves, black and white. His confusion lasted only until he realized that it was no longer a reflected image he saw, but his own body.
“What have you done to me?” the beggar man cried, reaching for the stranger in his body. Every movement seemed to drag; his arms had little strength to convey his fury.
Ghost snapped his fingers, and the black and white gloves disappeared, leaving his newly acquired hands half exposed in the fingerless gloves. Half-heartedly, he pushed the weakling back. How useful that lax body had proven to Ghost. How benign and unthreatening, a body that even a young boy could defeat. With an almost resigned shrug, he advanced on the whimpering and sorely confused wretch and wrapped his dirty hands about the skinny neck.
Nameless fought desperately, as desperately as Ghost’s puny form had ever battled, but there was no strength in his arms, no power to loosen the larger attacker’s hold. Soon he stopped struggling, and Ghost knew the beggar’s resignation was founded in grief for those he would leave behind.
The wicked man contemplated the change with amusement, thinking it curious, even humorous, that one as obviously wretched as this leprous beggar would lament the end of his life.
There was no mercy in Ghost, though. He had killed this body a hundred times, perhaps, and had killed his previous body a like number, and the body he had used before that as well.
The corpse slumped to the ground. Ghost immediately brought back his magical device and called upon its powers to watch the beggar man’s spirit step out of the slab form. Ghost quickly pulled off the fine black glove and placed it on his unoccupied body. He closed his eyes and stiffened his resolve against the ensuing pain, for the simple act had transferred a part of his own spirit back into the corpse.
It was a necessary step for two reasons. The body would heal—Ghost had a powerful magical item concealed in one boot to see to that—and if the receptacle remained open, then the beggar man’s spirit would find its way back in. Also, if Ghost allowed the body to die, if he allowed the item in his boot to call back a spirit, the item’s regenerative powers would partially consume the form. Considering how many times Ghost had made this switch, the item would have burned up the puny form long ago.
But that wouldn’t happen. Ghost knew how to use the items in conjunction; the Ghearufu, the glove-and-mirror device, had long ago shown him the way, and he had spent three lifetimes perfecting the act.
Ghost looked both ways along the empty road, then pulled the slender body far from the trail, into some covering brush. He felt the disease in this new form that he had taken. It was an unpleasant sensation, but Ghost took heart that he would not wear this disguise for long—just long enough to meet this young Cadderly for himself.
He hopped back out to the road and wandered along, wondering how much of the day he would have to watch pass him by before young Cadderly returned down the road.
After the thief in the beggar’s body had departed, Nameless’s spirit stood beside the puny corpse, confused and helpless. If Cadderly, with his new insight, had gazed upon the spirit then, he would have seen the shadows of Jhanine, Toby, and Millinea scattering to the four winds, fading like the images of hope that Nameless had never dared to sustain.
Cadderly approached the steep-sided, round hillock and the tower of Belisarius tentatively, fully expecting that the wizard, as knowledgeable as he was, would offer him little insight in-to the strange things that had been happening to him. Actually, Cadderly had no idea if the wizard would grant him an audience. He had done some valuable penning for Belisarius on several occasions, but he couldn’t really call the man a friend. Furthermore, Cadderly wasn’t sure that Belisarius would be home.
The young scholar relaxed a bit when a wide line up the nearly seventy-degree incline transformed from unremarkable grass to a stone stairway with flat and even steps. The wizard was home and apparently had seen Cadderly coming.
Seventy-five steps brought Cadderly to the hillock’s flat top and the cobblestone walkway that encircled the tower. Cadderly had to walk nearly halfway around the base, for Belisarius had placed his steps far to the side of the entrance this day. The steps never appeared on the same spot on the hillock, and Cadderly hadn’t yet figured out if the wizard created new steps each time, had some way of rotating the grassy knoll under the stationary tower, or simply deceived visitors of the steps’ actual location. Cadderly thought the last possibility, deception, the most likely, since Belisarius used his magic primarily for elaborate illusions.
The tower’s iron-bound door swung open as Cadderly approached (or had it been open all along, only appearing to be closed? Cadderly mused). Cadderly paused as he started over the threshold, for there came the sound of grating stone and an entire section of the stone wall in the foyer shifted and swung out, blocking the inner entry door and revealing a cobwebbed stairway winding down into the blackness.
Cadderly scratched the stubble on his chin, his gray eyes flashing inquisitively at the unexpected invitation. He remembered the days when he had come to the tower with Headmaster Avery. Every time, the skilled wizard presented the duo with a new test of cunning. Cadderly was glad for the diversion, glad that Belisarius had apparently come up with something new, something that might take the young man’s mind from the disturbing questions the beggar man had raised.
“This is a new path, and a new trick,” Cadderly said aloud, congratulating the wizard, who was no doubt listening. Always curious, the young scholar promptly pulled a torch from its sconce on the foyer wall and started down. Twenty spiraling steps later, he came to a low corridor ending at a thick wooden door. Cadderly carefully studied the portal for a long moment, then slowly placed his hand against it, feeling the solidity of its grain. Satisfied that it was real, he pushed it open and continued on, finding another descending stairway behind it.
The next level proved a bit more confusing. The stairway ended in a three-way intersection of similar, unremarkable stone passageways. Cadderly took a step straight ahead, then changed his mind and went to the left, passing through another door (after repeating his pause-and-study test), then another after that. Again he had entered an intersection, this one much more confusing, since each of the ways revealed many side passages, both left and right. Cadderly nearly laughed aloud and he silently congratulated the clever wizard. With a helpless shrug, he let his walking stick fall to the floor, then followed the path determined by the unseeing gaze of the carved ram’s head. Any way seemed as good as another as the young priest moved along, left, and then right, right again, and then straight ahead. Three more doors were left open behind him; one passage sloped down at a noticeable angle.
“Excellent!” Cadderly exclaimed when he passed a sharp corner, and found himself back where he had started, at the bottom of the second stairway. His torch was beginning to burn low, but the curious young priest pressed ahead once more, consciously selecting different avenues than on his first time through.
The torch burned away, leaving Cadderly in utter blackness. Calmly he closed his eyes and recalled a page in the Tome of Universal Harmony. He heard a few notes of Deneir’s endless song and muttered the appropriate chant, pointing to the tip of his burned-out torch. He blinked many times and squinted against the glare as the magical light came on, much brighter than the flickering torch flame had been. When his eyes at last adjusted, he went on, turning corner after corner.
A scuffling, scraping sound made him pause. It was no rat, Cadderly knew; the animal, if it was an animal, that had made the sound was much larger.
An image of a bull came into Cadderly’s thoughts. He recalled a day as a youngster, out with Headmaster Avery, when he had passed a pasture full of cows. At least, Avery had thought they were cows. Cadderiy couldn’t help but smile when he remembered the image of portly Avery huffing and puffing in full flight from an angry bull. The scuffling came again.
Cadderly considered extinguishing his magical light, but reconsidered immediately, realizing the predicament that act would leave him in. He crept up to the next corner, took off his wide-brimmed hat, and slowly peeked around.
The scuffler was humanoid, but certainly not human. It towered seven feet tall, shoulders and chest wide and impossibly strong, and its head—no mask, Cadderly knew— resembled the bull in that long-ago field. Wearing only a wolf pelt loincloth, the creature carried no weapon, though that hardly brought a sense of relief to the minimally armed young scholar.
A minotaur! Cadderly’s heart nearly failed him. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure that this whole trek through the tower’s catacombs was inspired by Belisarius. It occurred to Cadderly that something pernicious might have happened to the congenial mage, that some dark force might have overcome the tower’s formidable defenses.
His thoughts were blown away, along with his breath, a moment later, as the bull-headed giant scraped one foot on the stone again and charged, slamming into Cadderly and launching him across the corridor. He cracked his shoulder blade as he smashed into the stone, and his torch flew away, though of course the magical light did not diminish.
The minotaur snorted and stormed in. Cadderly took up his walking stick defensively, wondering what in the Nine Hells the minuscule weapon could do against this awesome beast. The minotaur seemed none too concerned with it, striding right in to meet its foe.
Cadderly swung with all his might, but the skinny club broke apart as he connected on the brute’s thick-skinned chest.
The minotaur slapped him once, then leaned its horned head in, squashing Cadderly against the stone. The young man freed one arm and punched the beast, to no avail. The beast pressed more forcefully and Cadderly could neither squirm nor breathe.
His estimate of how long he had to live shortened considerably when the minotaur opened its huge mouth, putting its formidable teeth in line with Cadderly’s exposed neck.
In that split second, the young priest recognized the felds of energy floating about him. He looked down to the floor, to his unbroken walking stick.
Cadderly jammed his free arm into the gaping maw, and plunged his hand down the minotaur’s throat. A moment later, he retracted the hand, holding the bull-headed monster’s beating heart. The creature fell back a step, not daring to do anything at all.
“I have traveled down two stairways, which actually went up,” Cadderly announced firmly. “And through six doors, two of which were illusionary. That would put me in the west wing of your library, would it not, good Belisarius?”
The illusionary minotaur disappeared, but, strangely, Cadderly still held the pumping heart. The scene reverted to its true form, the west wing, as Cadderly had guessed, and Belisarius, a confused, almost frightened look on his bushy-browed, bearded face, stood across the room, leaning heavily on a bookcase.
Cadderly winked at him, then opened his mouth and moved as though to take a bite of the thing in his hand.
“Oh, you!” the wizard cried. He turned away and put a hand to his mouth, trying to keep his stomach’s contents down. “Oh, do not! I beg, do not!”
Cadderly dismissed the gruesome image, willed it away, though he was not certain how he had brought it into being in the first place.
“How?” the wizard gasped, finally composed.
“My magic has shifted recently,” Cadderly tried to explain, “grown.”
“That is no clerical magic I have ever heard of,” Belisarius insisted. “To create such perfect illusions...” Just the words made the wizard picture the heart, and he gagged yet again.
Cadderly understood something that Belisarius apparently did not. “I did not create the image,” the young scholar explained, as much to himself as to the wizard, “nor did I collect the magical forces necessary to create the image.”
The wizard dismissed any remaining revulsion, too intrigued by what Cadderly was hinting at. He moved quietly across the room toward the young priest.
“I saw the energies gathered,” Cadderly went on. “I discovered the trick for what it was and . .. perverted ... your grand imagery.”
“Couldn’t you have dispelled it altogether, as most priests would have?” Belisarius asked dryly.
Cadderly shrugged. “I thought I had,” he replied with a wry smile, “in a grand fashion befitting your illusions.”
Belisarius tipped his floppy woolen cap to the young priest.
“But I am not sure,” Cadderly admitted. “Actually, I am not sure of much where my magic is concerned, and that is why I have returned.”
Belisarius led the young man to the adjoining sitting room where they both nestled into comfortable chairs. The wizard produced four items—three rings and a slender wand—that Cadderly had given him three weeks before, and laid them aside, anxious to hear Cadderly’s revelations.
It took Cadderly a while to begin his many tales—so much had happened to him! Once he began, though, he went on and on, covering every minute detail. He told Belisarius about summoning Shilrnista’s trees, about healing Tintagel, and about watching the gallant horse Temmerisa’s spirit depart. Then he spoke of the more specific and recent incidents, of creating light and then darkness in his room and in Belisarius’s maze. Most disturbing of all to the young priest were the shadowy images he had seen dancing atop shoulders. Cadderly said nothing immediately about his dreams, though, not quite certain of how they fit into anything, and also a bit afraid of what they might reveal.
“The spells you speak of are not so unusual to one of priestly magic,” the wizard said when the obviously exasperated young man had finished his worrisome tale. “Many can be duplicated by a wizard as well, such as the manipulation of light. As for the shadows, well, clerics have been able to determine the general weal of individuals for centuries.”
“Aurora,” Cadderly replied, speaking the one word he had been able to decipher from that particular chant. “I do not understand how ‘the dawn’ would affect such a spell.” Belisarius scratched his graying beard. “That is unusual,” he said at length. “But is ‘the dawn’ the only meaning of the word? When was this wondrous tome penned?” Cadderly thought for a moment, then had his answer. “Aurora,” he said firmly, “aura “ He looked up to the wizard and smiled widely.
“Aurora means aura,” Belisarius agreed, “or at least it used to, referring to the emanation of light, of good, surrounding an individual. There you have it, then, a clerical spell to be sure. Perhaps that is what has happened to you, only you have not yet learned to interpret what you see.” Cadderly nodded, though he did not really agree. He certainly knew how to—or felt how to—interpret the dancing and fleeting shadows; that was not the problem.
“I have witnessed extreme examples of clerical magic,” Cadderly replied, “but these powers, I fear, are different. I do not study the spells before I call on them, as do the priests at the library. I make no preparations at all—as with the illusion that I defeated before your eyes. I did not expect you to challenge me so. I was not even expecting you to know I had come to visit.”
Cadderly had to pause for a long moment to compose himself, and during the silence, Belisarius mumbled almost constantly under his breath and scratched at his bushy beard.
“You know something,” Cadderly declared, his words sounding like an accusation.
“I suspect something,” Belisarius replied. “Since the Time of Troubles, there have been increasing reports of individuals with internal magical powers.”
“Psionics,” Cadderly said immediately.
“You have heard of them, then,” the wizard said. He threw his wiry arms out wide in heightened resignation. “Of course you have,” he muttered. “You have heard of everything. That is what is so very frustrating about dealing with you.”
The dramatics pulled a smile out of Cadderly and allowed him to relax back in the comfortable leather seat.
Belisarius seemed truly intrigued, as though he desperately hoped his guess was correct. “Might you be a psionicist?” he asked.
“I know little about them,” the young priest admitted. “If that is what is happening to me, then it is happening without my assistance or approval.”
“The powers are not so different from those of a wizard,” Belisarius explained, “except that they come from the individual’s mind and not the external powers of the universe. I am well acquainted with your mental abilities.” He snickered, obviously referring to his spell book, which Cadderly had replaced from memory alone. “That type of prowess is the prime element of a psionicist’s power.”
Cadderly considered the words and gradually began to shake his head. “The power I manipulated in this tower was external,” he reasoned. “Could psionics interact so with a wizard’s spell?”
Belisarius patted a knobby finger against his lower lip, his frown revealing the snag in the logic. “I do not know,” he admitted. The two sat quietly, digesting the details of their conversation.
“It does not fit,” Cadderly announced a moment later. “I am the receptacle of the power and the transmuter of the power to the desired effect, of that much I am sure.”
“I will not argue “ Belisarius replied, “but such power must have a conduit—a spell, if you will. One cannot simply tap into the external energies of the universe on a whim!”
Cadderly understood the growing excitement in the wizard’s voice. If Belisarius was wrong, then the wizard’s entire life, his hermitlike devotion to his magical studies, might be revealed as an exercise in futility.
“The song” Cadderly muttered, suddenly realizing the truth of it all.
“Song?”
“The Tome of Universal Harmony” the young priest explained. “The book of Deneir. Whenever I have used the powers, even unconsciously, as with the dancing shadows, I have heard the song of that book in the recesses of my mind. My answers are in that song.”
“Song of the book?” Belisarius could not begin to understand.
“The rhythm of the words,” Cadderly tried to explain, though he knew he could not, not really.
Belisarius shrugged and seemed to accept the simple explanation. “Then you have found your conduit,” he said, “but I fear there is little I can tell you concerning it. This book would seem to be more a matter to take up with the headmasters at the Edificant Library.”
“Or with my deity,” Cadderly mumbled.
Belisarius shrugged noncommittally. “As you will,” he said. “I can tell you this much, though, and I know I am right simply by looking at your haggard features—“
“I have not been sleeping well,” Cadderly promptly put in, fearing what the wizard would say.
“Magic, the transference of such energies,” Belisarius went on, undeflected by Cadderly’s announcement, “exacts a toll on the practitioner. We wizards are very careful not to exceed our limitations. Normally we could not anyway, since the memorization of any spell is when those limits are revealed.
“Likewise, a cleric’s granted powers stem from his or her faith and are tempered by agents of the gods, or even by the gods themselves where the high priests are sometimes concerned,” Belisarius reasoned. “I warn you, young Cadderly, I have seen foolish mages consumed when trying to cast the spells of those more powerful than they, spells beyond their abilities. If you have found a way to avoid the normal boundaries and limitations of magic use, whatever type of magic might be involved, then I pray you will find the wisdom to moderate your activities, else it will consume you.”
A thousand possibilities began their progression through Cadderly’s thoughts. Perhaps he should go back to the library with his dilemma. He could speak to Pertelope . . .
“Now for some items that I know more about,” Belisarius said. The wizard reached for the rings and the wand. He first held up a signet ring inscribed with the trident-and-bottle design of Castle Trinity. It once had belonged to the evil mage Dorigen.
“There is no detectable magic in this, as you believed,” the wizard said, tossing it to Cadderly.
“I know,” Cadderly said, as he caught it and put it into his pouch.
The declaration made Belisarius pause and consider the young man. “This ring,” he said slowly, holding up the gold band set with a large onyx stone, “is indeed magical, and powerful.
“It evokes a line of flame,” Cadderly said, “when the possessor utters ‘Fete,’ the elven word for fire. I have seen it in use,” the young priest added quickly, noticing Belisarius’s deepening frown.
“Indeed,” muttered the wizard. “And have you ever heard of a wizard named Agannazzar?”
Belisarius smiled as Cadderly shook his head. “He is a mage of no large fame born two centuries ago,” the wizard explained.
“Now dead,” Cadderly reasoned.
“Perhaps,” Belisarius said wryly, flashing a wink. “One can never be certain where wizards are concerned.”
“And was this his ring?” Cadderly asked.
“I cannot be sure “ Belisarius replied. “Either he or one of his associates created it with this specific power imbued. It is not too powerful, but you may find it useful.” He tossed it to Cadderly and took up the wand. The young priest suspected that Belisarius had purposely saved the remaining ring for last.
“This is a common device “ the wizard began, but Cadderly stopped him with an upraised hand. At first the wand seemed an unremarkable, slender shaft of black wood just over a foot long, but, as he looked at it, Cadderly heard the notes of a distant song playing in his mind.
Cadderly studied deeper, sensed, and then saw clearly, the magic of the item.
“Light,” he said to the wizard. “The wand’s power has to do with the manipulation of illumination.”
Belisarius frowned again and looked at the wand, as if ensuring that there were no runes visibly etched on its smooth side. “You have seen it in use?” the wizard asked hopefully, already tired of being upstaged.
“No,” Cadderly said absently, not releasing his attention from the revelations. In his mind, he saw lights forrriing different images and dancing about. “Domin flfu,” he muttered.
The light he pictured became constant and of the same intensity as the light he had conjured in his room and in the maze.
“fflu” an arcane word for light, escaped his trembling lips. The light intensified, brightened to where Cadderly squinted against the glare in his mind.
“Mas flu” he said, the literal translation being “Great light.” The image burst forth in all its splendor, a fiery green explosion of light spewing golden rays and blazing in Cadderly’s mind. Cadderly cried out and looked away, nearly shouting, “flumas beffe!” as he fell out of his chair. Cadderly sat up and looked at the wizard, who was still sitting, holding the unremarkable wand in his extended hand.
“What just happened?” Belisarius asked bluntly. “I saw the powers—four distinctly,” Cadderly stammered, “in my mind.”
“And you repeated the triggering phrases,” the perturbed wizard added, “exactly.” “But how?” Cadderly asked him, honestly perplexed. “Go see a priest,” Belisarius said with a snarl. “Why did you waste my time and effort on things you already knew?”
“I did not,” Cadderly insisted.
“Go see a priest,” Belisarius repeated, tossing the wand to Cadderly.
The young man accepted the item and looked to the floor beside the wizard’s chair. “We have one more ring to explore,” he remarked, backing away into his chair as he spoke.
Belisarius scooped up the remaining ring, a gold band lined with diamond chips, and held it out for Cadderly to see. “You tell me,” the wizard insisted.
Again Cadderly heard the distant song playing, but for the sake of his valued friend’s pride, he consciously pushed it away.
“It is not magical,” he lied, extending his hand to accept it.
“Hah!” the wizard snapped and pulled back his hand. “This is the most potent item of all!” He held it close to his sparkling, admiring eyes. “A ring for wizards,” he explained, “to heighten their powers. It would be quite useless to you.”
An alarm went off in Cadderly’s head. What was sneaky Belisarius up to? The young priest concentrated not on the ring, but on the wizard himself, and saw a shadow image of Belisarius perched on the wizard’s shoulder, waggling its eager fingers and rubbing its hands anxiously as it peered at the ring. But Cadderly realized that the wizard’s greed was indeed for a wizard’s item. The bent of the shadow told him beyond any doubt that Belisarius had not lied to him, and he privately berated himself for thinking differently.
“Keep it,” he offered.
The wizard nearly toppled from his chair. His smile seemed as though it would engulf his ears. “I will,” he said, his voice an unintentional shriek. “What might I pay you in return?”
Cadderly waved the thought away.
“I must insist,” Belisarius continued, undaunted. “This is too valuable a gift—“
“Not to me,” Cadderly reminded him.
Belisarius conceded the point with a nod, but still searched for some way to give something back to the young priest.
“Your walking stick!” he proclaimed at last.
Cadderly took up the item, not understanding.
“You use it as a weapon?”
“If I must use anything at all,” Cadderly answered. “It is harder than my hand.” The mere mention of open-handed combat inevitably brought an image of Danica to Cadderly’s mind.
“But not as sturdy as you would like?” Belisarius went on, not noticing the cloud of despair that briefly crossed Cadderly’s face.
“Do not deny it,” the wizard insisted. “You regaled your fears for the feebleness of the weapon in your fight with the minotaur, when you readily accepted the image of it breaking.”
Cadderly didn’t argue.
“Leave it with me, my boy!” Belisarius cried. “Give me a few days, and I promise you that you will never consider it a feeble weapon again.”
“So you are an enchanter as well?” Cadderly remarked.
“There are many wizardly talents that a cleric would not understand,” the wizard replied with an exaggerated air of superiority.
“Especially a cleric who does not understand his own talents,” Cadderly replied, his simple admission stealing the wizard’s bluster.
Belisarius nodded and managed a weak smile, then left Cadderly with a final thought: “Moderation.”
Cadderly was a bit surprised to find Nameless still wandering the road between the wizard’s tower and Carradoon, expecting that the beggar would either have gone to Carradoon to further his day’s take, or to his wife and children to enjoy a reprieve from the unenviable lifestyle that had been forced upon him.
Cadderly grew even more surprised when the beggar looked at him and gave him an exaggerated wink, holding up and jingling the purse of gold with a lascivious smile on his dirty face.
Something about that gesture struck Cadderly as badly out of character for Nameless, an act of open greed or open thanks, neither of which applied to the proud, unfortunate man Cadderly had met earlier on the road.
Then Cadderly saw the shadows.
He could not make them out distinctly, as he had the images of Jhanine and her children. They were hunched and growling things, their forms shifting continually, but always emanating a clear and unrepentant wickedness to the young priest. One imaginary claw reached out from the beggar’s shoulder and raked the air in Cadderly’s direction.
Suddenly Cadderly was very afraid. His neck hair stood on end; his heart began to drum rapidly. A sickly sweet smell came to him then; he thought he heard the buzz of flies. Cadderly shook his head vigorously, feeling that he must be going insane. It seemed as if his senses had heightened, become animallike, and the sudden intrusion of so much stimulation nearly overwhelmed the young priest.
Then he was calm again and looking at the innocent beggar man. He wished that he had his walking stick, and glanced back to the distant tower.
“Fine day!” the beggar said, seeming cheery, though Cadderly instinctively knew better.
Fete. The word came into Cadderly’s head and he almost uttered it. He looked down to his hand, the onyx ring upon one finger, and saw that he had subconsciously angled it the beggar’s way.
“Must you be gone so soon?” the beggar man asked, sounding innocent, almost wounded.
Cadderly saw the black shadows crouched upon the man’s shoulder, saw the claws and venom-dripping fangs.
He nodded briskly, pulled his cloak tightly around his shoulders, and hurried on his way.
He caught a whiff of that sickly sweet scent again and heard the flies. If he had been alone and not so unnerved, he would have stopped and sought out the source. He glanced to the side only briefly as he passed, to the bushes lining the road.
If he had looked closer, Cadderly would have discovered the body, already bloated after just a few hours in the late summer sun. And if he had found the strength to work his magical perceptions, Cadderly would have seen, too, the spirit of Nameless, helpless and hopeless and pitifully wandering until the gods came to claim it.
The young priest had noticed the change! Ghost cursed himself and considered the implications of the unexpected occurrence. He had never really believed that he would be able to kill Cadderiy so easily—according to every piece of information he had been given, this young priest was a deadly opponent—but when he had seen Cadderly coming down the road, alone and with no obvious witnesses around, Ghost had briefly wondered if the purse might be earned quickly, if his artistry had so easily paid off.
The beggar man had gained Cadderly’s confidence; that much Ghost knew from eavesdropping on their conversation. Now, posing as that man, the assassin thought he could get close, could catch Cadderly with his guard down. But the young priest had noticed the change!
Ghost replayed the brief encounter, trying to discern where his act had failed. Nothing obvious came to him; certainly nothing so blatant as to justify sending a defensively huddled Cadderly running on his way. A singular fear came to the assassin then: if Cadderly proved as formidable as the reports had indicated—and as Ghost was now beginning to suspect—then he might be strong enough to fend off the magic of the Ghearufu. It had been done only twice before, both times by wizards, when Ghost’s attempts at possession had been mentally blocked.
“There are other options” Ghost said aloud, reminding himself of his many allies and of the fact that both of those resisting wizards had wound up as worm food. One of those times, Ghost had possessed a victim that the unsuspecting mage could not suspect—his wife. What a sweet kill that had been! On the other occasion, Ghost had served the attending Night Mask band as an infiltrator, providing them with such an enormous amount of information that the targeted wizard, as powerful as he was, had been among the society’s easiest kills.
“Either way, young Cadderly,” the merciless assassin whispered to the wind, “I shall paint my picture, and you shall be dead before the first of winter’s snows.”
With an evil snicker, the assassin in a beggar’s body went to the bushes and retrieved his own form. The magical ring had nearly completed its healing work on the limp-muscled figure by then; the stench was fast fading and the flies had gone away.
“Do you wear a ring such as mine?” the evil man teased to the formless spirit he knew would still be wandering the area. Ghost willed the Ghearufu, white glove and mirror, back into sight and took the black-gloved hand from the hand of the corpse. He fell back into his mind, connecting with the powers of the magical device.
The eyes of the assassin’s more familiar form blinked open just in time to watch the beggar’s body fall stiffly to the side. Ghost spent a moment reorienting himself to his customary form, then propped himself up on his elbows.
“No magic ring?” He laughed at the beggar man’s corpse. “Then you will stay dead, pitiful fool, though whoever finds your body will have no idea of how you died!” The thought widened Ghost’s smile. In his earliest days with the Ghearufu, more than a hundred years before, he had hacked up his unmarked victims. His confidence had quickly grown, though, and Ghost had soon changed tactics, thinking in his budding arrogance that the mysteries surrounding the demise of an apparently healthy body would serve as an appropriate calling card.
Ghost willed the Ghearufu away and brushed the dirt from his clothes. He started down the road immediately for the distant gates of Carradoon, for his room at the Dragon’s Codpiece.
The firbolg noted with distaste the apparently normal situation at the farmhouse on the outskirts of Carradoon. A few hens clucked and strutted, pecking at discarded seed here and there; the three horses in the stable beside the barn showed no signs that they had been spooked in the least; and the house itself seemed perfectly secure, not a broken window or even a visible scrape mark on any door.
Vander knew better. It was always this way, always done in absolute secrecy. It all seemed so perfectly cowardly to the warrior giant.
“We could have stayed in the forest,” Vander muttered, flipping his white-furred cloak back over his muscular shoulders.
The black-and-silver-outfitted assassins at the firbolg’s sides looked at each other curiously. “It was by your orders ...” one of them began to reply, but Vander’s upraised hand silenced him.
Not by my orders, the firbolg thought, remembering when Ghost, in Vander’s magnificent body, had set the troupe into motion, while Vander could only sit and watch helplessly from inside Ghost’s weak form.
“We must get inside,” offered the assassin after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. “This yard can be seen from the road.”
“The light of day offends you,” the firbolg remarked.
“It reveals us,” the Night Mask replied obstinately. Vander cast him a threatening scowl but did follow the two men to the door. The portal was large enough so that Vander did not have to alter his size, and he was glad, for he did not enjoy wearing a human frame, especially not around the treacherous murderers. He liked the imposing strength of his giant body, the long and muscled limbs that could reach an enemy from across a room and easily throttle him.
Vander hesitated at the threshold. “The house is secure,” one of the assassins inside assured the firbolg, misunderstanding his dismay. “Only the elder daughter remains alive, and she is held”—the lewd way the man spoke that word irritated Vander profoundly— “in the bedroom.”
Vander strode in. “Where?” he demanded, purposely redirecting his gaze from the bloodied male and female bodies in the corner of the small kitchen. The human assassin, obviously unbothered by the gruesome sight, sat at the table, casually eating breakfast. He motioned to a door at the back of the room.
Propelled by his mounting rage, Vander was across the kitchen and through the door in an instant. He nearly tripped over a smaller bloodied form just inside the second room, and that moved him along only faster, more determinedly.
This room connected to a side bedroom, its door open a crack. A whimpering sound came from within, revealing to Vander what was going on before the firbolg even shoved the door wide.
The girl lay on the bed, half-dressed and securely tied to the posts by her wrists and ankles, with the sides of her mouth pulled tightly back by a cloth gag. An assassin lay on each side of her, teasing her and taking delight at her terrified movements.
Vander had to stoop low in this room to avoid the ceiling beams, but that didn’t slow him. He swept aside the three Night Masks standing in his way with a single movement, then stepped to the foot of the bed.
One of the prone assassins looked up and grinned wickedly, misconstruing the firbolg’s urgency. The fool motioned for Vander to join in the fun.
Vander’s great hands caught both the men by their collars and sent them flying across the room to collide heavily with the wall on each side of the door. The firbolg quickly threw a blanket over the exposed young woman and turned to face his hated associates.
The three on the side of the room looked to each other nervously; one of the men who had hit the wall lay crumpled in a heap at its base. The other, though, was up and outraged, a short sword in one hand.
Vander couldn’t help but grin as he considered the situation. Might this be the long-awaited showdown? A nagging thought stole his mirth. He could kill these men, all five, and probably the other dozen or so that were in and about the house, but what about Ghost?
Always, the firbolg had to remember Ghost.
“You three,” he commanded to the men on the side of the room. “Your associate has drawn a weapon on your master.”
The three understood the implications immediately, as did the man holding the short sword, if his suddenly fearful expression correctly revealed his thoughts. The Night Masks were a vicious and evil band, but within the organization existed strict codes of conduct and horrible forms of discipline that even the hardiest assassin feared. The three by the wall drew their own weapons and faced the traitor.
The man with the short sword fumbled to put his weapon away. He jerked once, then again, a confused expression on his face.
His accomplice, crumpled at the base of the wall, was not as dazed as he had appeared, and he was eager to regain the taskmaster’s favor. In his hand he held the last of three daggers, and this one, too, he whipped across to find a place in the traitor’s side.
Anxious to show their respect and loyalty to their powerfull leader, the other three promptly rushed the dying man. A club slapped the short sword from trembling hands, and all four loyal soldiers set upon the doomed man, hacking and crushing until he lay in a bloody heap on the floor.
“Put him with the other dead,” Vander said to them. He looked back to the bed. “And find a proper prison for this girl.”
“She is a witness and must be killed,” an assassin replied. “That is our way.”
“On my word alone,” Vander growled back, his voice carrying tremendous influence now, considering the grim fate of the one who had dared to oppose him. “Now take her!” The same man who had questioned the decision started immediately for the bed, sheathing his weapon, but not relenting his steely eyed glare.
Vander caught him in one hand by the throat and easily lifted him from the floor.
“You are not to touch her.” The firbolg snarled in his face. He noticed the man’s hand inching toward his belt. “Yes,” Vander purred, “do draw your little knife!”
The three remaining men seemed at a loss.
“She must be killed,” one of them dared to offer in support of his threatened colleague.
The man in Vander’s grasp twisted free enough to growl defiantly at the firbolg.
Vander heaved him through the nearest wall, back into the kitchen. Several assassins who had gathered in the other room stared through the hole in disbelief at the angry firbolg.
“On your word alone,” the three men by the door said obediently.
“I will make my place in the barn,” Vander said to them all. “It is more fitting to my size and there I will not have to deal with your impertinence. I warn you just one more time,” he growled ominously.”If the girl is harmed in any way . .”
Vander left it at that, preferring to end the threat by leading the others’ gazes to the squirming and groaning Night Mask caught fast by broken, stabbing planks halfway between the bedroom and the kitchen.
Fredegar Harriman, proprietor of the Dragon’s Codpiece , shook his thick-jowled face in disbelief at the request for yet another private room. The inn had only eight such rooms, and while the much less expensive common room was nearly empty, all of the private rooms were occupied. That alone seemed amazing enough, but what struck Fredegar as even more odd was the makeup of his guests. Five of the rooms belonged to visiting merchants, as was common. A sixth had been paid for until the end of the year by Cadderly, and a seventh had been reserved by the Edificant Library for use by a soon-to-arrive headmaster. Even more unexpectedly, the last room had been rented that very day, to a stranger nearly as curious-looking as this brown-haired lad.
“Common room won’t do?” the flustered innkeeper asked. “At least for a few nights? It’s on the back side of the building. Not much of a view, but quiet enough.”
The young man shook his head, his stringy brown hair flopping to one side, revealing that half of his head had been shaved. “I can pay you well,” Bogo offered, giving his purse a quick shake to accentuate the point.
Fredegar continued to wipe the bar and tried to find a way around the dilemma. He didn’t want to put the young man out, more for the innkeeper’s reputation and his sincerity than for the lost coins, but he didn’t see a way around it. The hearth room was teeming this night—it had been full every night since the rumors of impending war had spread through Carradoon—mostly with locals. Fredegar peered through the throng, trying to see if any of his private guests were in attendance.
“I have just one room empty,” he explained, “but it won’t be for long—might even be filled this night.”
“I am here now to fill it,” Bogo argued. “Is my gold not as good as another’s?”
“Your gold is fine” Fredegar assured him, hoping to keep the tension low. “The one open room has been reserved for more than a week by priests from the Edificant Library. I have assured them that it will be available, and, well, if you are from the area, you know that it is not wise for an honest merchant such as myself to alienate the Edificant Library.”
Bogo perked his ears up at mention of the place and the notion that other priests were on their way to town.
“Headmaster Avery and Kierkan Rufo will be in soon,” the talkative innkeeper went on. “I haven’t seen the good, fat headmaster for almost a year now. I expect he and Rufo have come to town to meet with young Cadderly, another of my guests and another of their priests, and to prepare for this potential war that everyone seems to be talking about.”
Bogo scrutinized every word, all the while trying to appear unconcerned. The news about Rufo seemed almost too good to be true. Having the two-time stooge so close at hand could aid his plans to make the kill on Cadderly.
Fredegar, as usual, rambled on in many unimportant directions, speaking mostly of the outrageous rumors that had been circulating. Bogo put in an occasional smile or grunt to make it appear that he was listening, but his mind was whirling down the many avenues the newest information had opened to him.
“I have it!” Fredegar announced suddenly, so loudly that several patrons at the nearest tables of the hearth room stopped their conversations and turned to regard the innkeeper.
“Malcolm,” Fredegar called across the room. An older gentleman, a merchant, by his rich and fanciful dress, looked up from his table.
“Half price if you will share a room with my Brennan,” Fredegar offered.
The old gentleman smiled and turned to talk with his companions at the table, then stood and came over to the bar.
“I have only one more night in town,” he answered when he arrived. “I leave for Riatavin in the morning.” He winked conspiratorially, both at Fredegar and the odd-looking young man standing at the bar. “One can make fine trades with such grim news filling the air, eh?”
“A night with my Brennan?” Fredegar said hopefully.
The merchant gazed across the room to a younger woman, fine in stature and looking back at him with obvious interest. “I had hoped to be accompanied on my last night in town,” he explained. Again came his wink, this time even more lecherous. “After all, back in Riatavin tomorrow night, I will be forced to spend some time with my wife.”
Fredegar, blushing, joined him in his laughter.
“I could spend a single night in the common room,” Bogo interjected, not at all amused by the worthless bantering, “if you will guarantee me this man’s room by midday tomorrow.” Bogo turned his thin lips up in a wry smile, thinking it best to play the conniving buddy game. “Free of charge this night?” he asked coyly.
Fredegar, never one to bicker (especially not when the inn was so full), readily agreed. “And an ale with my compliments, young stranger,” the innkeeper offered as he filled a tankard. “And one for your intended?” Fredegar asked Malcolm.
“I will meet it at the table,” the lecherous merchant replied, going back to his seat.
Bogo accepted the drink with a smile and turned about, leaning with his elbow propped on the bar. The crowd buzzed and played; it was a jovial and warm inn, its atmosphere not at all hindered (perhaps even enhanced) by the still-distant rumors of war. The perfect cover, Bogo thought as he watched the bustle, and he nearly laughed aloud as he considered how the events of the next few days might steal a bit of the mirth.
“So good that you have returned!” he heard Fredegar say a short while later. Bogo’s eyes widened and he purposely shifted farther down the bar as a young man, of above average height and solid build, moved to join the innkeeper. He wore a blue, wide-brimmed hat lined with a red sash. Set in its middle was a porcelain brooch bearing the holy symbol of Deneir. There could be little doubt as to this one’s identity—Dorigen’s description of Cadderly had not included the beard, but Bogo could see that it was newly grown, and the unkempt sand-brown hair and gray eyes certainly fit.
“Headmaster Avery and Kierkan Rufo are coming in,” Fredegar explained, “perhaps this very night.”
Bogo noticed the young man flinch at that remark, though the priest had tried to cover his reaction. “Do they know I am staying here?” he asked.
Fredegar seemed at a loss by his guest’s obvious, discomfort. “Why, Cadderly,” he replied slyly, “have’you done something wrong?”
The young priest smiled noncommittally and started for the staircase beside the bar. Distracted, Cadderly did not even notice the odd-looking young man as he passed by.
But Bogo certainly noticed Cadderly. He watched the priest go, thinking how easy this all might be.
He stood in a lighted room, the sitting room of Belisarius ‘s tower perhaps, holding a beating heart in his hand. The slain minotaur lay at his feet and all his closest friends, Danica and the dwarven brothers, stood by it, laughing wildly, uncontrollably.
Cadderly, too, joined in the laughter, but as soon is he did, he realized that his friends were not laughing at all. Rather, they were crying, sobbing great tears that streaked their cheeks and fell in impossibly large puddles at their feet.
He did not understand.
Something was logically wrong; Cadderly sensed that something about the entire scene was out of place. He felt the warm blood running down his arm, soaking his tunic, but in his perversion of the wizard’s minotaur and maze illusion, there had been no blood! Slowly, fearfully, the young scholar looked down.
The minotaur was not a minotaur any longer, nor had it vanished like some insubstantial illusion, as Cadderly had expected. It was Avery—Cadderly knew it was Avery, though he could not see the face of the man who lay on his back across a table, arms and legs splayed wide and his chest savagely torn open.
Cadderly held Avery’s still-beating heart.
He tried to scream but could not. There came a rapping noise, sharp but distant.
He could not scream.
Cadderly sat up. The rapping came again, more insistently, followed by a voice that Cadderly could not ignore,.. At last he dared to open his eyes and sighed deeply when he learned that he was in his own room, that it had all been another terrible dream.
“Cadderly?”
The call was not a dream, and his recognition of the commanding, fatherly voice could not be wrong. He closed his eyes again, tried to pretend he was not there, or that Avery was not there.
“Cadderly?” The knocking did not diminish.
What time was it? Cadderly wondered. The moon was up, though beyond its zenith, for no direct silvery light played through the young priest’s east window.
Resignedly, Cadderly pulled himself out of bed, straightened his nightshirt, and went to the closed door.
“Cadderly?”
He cracked open the portal and winced at the sight of Headmaster Avery. Kierkan Rufo, leaning as always in his customary position, leered over the headmaster’s broad shoulder.
“It is late,” Cadderly mumbled through the cottony sensation and the lump of revulsion in his mouth. He could not look at Avery without the gruesome dream image coming clearly to his thoughts, could not regard the man without the warm sensation of blood running along his arm. Unconsciously, he rubbed one hand against his nightshirt.
“So it is,” Avery replied, somewhat embarrassed, “but I thought you would be pleased to learn that Rufo here, and I, have arrived in town. We shall be staying at the inn, just four doors down from you, across from the stairway.” The portly headmaster glanced that way, his expression clearly revealing an invitation for the young priest.
Cadderly only nodded, then winced again as another drop of imaginary blood ran the length of his forearm.
Avery did not miss the sour expression. “Is something wrong, lad?” the headmaster asked with compassion.
“Nothing,” Cadderly replied curtly. He mellowed immediately, guessing that his demeanor would inspire further curiosity. “I am just tired. I was sleeping . . .”
“My pardon,” Avery said, straining to be lighthearted, “but you are not sleeping now.” He took a step forward, as though to push his way into the room.
Cadderly shifted to block the door. “I will soon be sleeping again,” he said evenly.
Avery stepped back and, for the first time since he had arrived, regarded Cadderly with a less than appreciative glint in his puffy eyes.
“Still stubborn?” Avery asked him sharply. “You tread on dangerous ground, young priest. Your absence from the library might be overlooked. Dean Thobicus has promised that he will allow you to make up your missed duties and studies.”
“I do not care for his promise.”
“If you continue on your wayward path,” Avery went on, his voice a growl against Cadderly’s biting remark, “then you may move beyond the order altogether. I am not certain even kind Thobicus could forgive your transgressions against Deneir. . . .”
“What do you know of Deneir?” Cadderly asked. In his mind he saw Avery again, lying dead across the table, but he shook the evil thought away, realizing how much he loved this man who had been a surrogate father to him. “And why would you care for me? Did you not once call me a ‘Gondsman’?” Cadderly asked sharply, referring to the order of inventive priests who created without conscience, without regard to the implications of their creations.
His tirade exhausted, Cadderly looked at the headmaster, the father he had just terribly wounded with his impertinence. Avery couldn’t respond to his last statement and seemed more on the verge of tears than an explosion of anger. Behind him, Kierkan Rufo wore an almost amused expression of disbelief.
“I am sorry,” Cadderly stammered. Avery put a large hand up to halt him.
“I am tired, that is all,” Cadderly tried to explain. “I have had some terrible dreams of late.”
Avery’s expression shifted to one of concern, and Cadderly knew his apology had been accepted, or would be soon.
“We are but four doors down,” the portly headmaster reiterated. “If you feel the need to talk, do come and join us.”
Cadderly nodded, though he knew he would not go to them, and shut the door the second Avery had turned away. He fell back against the door heavily, thinking how flimsy a barrier it was against the doubts and confusion of the outside world. He looked to his table by the window, to the open tome. When was the last time that book had been closed?
Cadderly couldn’t even muster the strength to go to it; he slipped over to his bed and collapsed, hoping that he had put this night’s evil dreams behind him.
Bogo Rath released his spell of clairaudience and cracked open the common room’s door. The common room was on the southwestern wing of the inn’s second level; almost directly across from him, over the hearth room, loomed Cadderly’s door, closed once more. Avery and Rufo rounded the corner diagonally to Bogo’s right, moving toward the door directly opposite the wide staircase. The hearth room
was quiet now and Bogo could hear their conversation clearly.
“His surliness has not relented one bit since he passed through the library,” Rufo said in an accusatory tone.
“He appeared weary,” Avery answered with a resigned sigh. “Poor lad—perhaps Danica’s arrival will brighten his mood.”
They entered their room then, and Bogo considered using his eavesdropping magic to hear the rest of their discussion.
“Who is Danica?” came a quiet, monotone question from behind Bogo. The young wizard froze, then slowly managed to turn about.
There stood Ghost, in the otherwise empty common room. The puny man held no weapon and made no move toward Bogo, but the wizard felt vulnerable nonetheless. How had Ghost come in so easily behind him? There was but one door to the room, and it had no outside balcony, as did the more expensive private rooms.
“How did you get in here?” Bogo asked, managing to steady his voice.
“I have been in here all along,” Ghost replied. He turned and pointed to a pile of blankets. “In there, awaiting your return from the hearth room.”
“You should have told me.”
Ghost’s wheezing laughter mocked him and showed him how ridiculous he had sounded.
“Who is Danica?” the evil little man asked again, more determinedly.
“Lady Danica Maupoissant,” Bogo replied, “from Westgate. Do you know of her?”
Ghost shook his head.
“She is Cadderly’s dearest friend,” Bogo went on, “a beautiful wisp of a woman, by all descriptions, but formidable.” Bogo’s expression and tone grew grave. “This is not good news, my associate,” he explained. “Lady Maupoissant has been a terrible foe to Castle Trinity in the fight thus far. If she arrives soon, then you would be well advised to finish your business with Cadderly promptly and be gone from here.”
Ghost nodded, considering the warning. “From where will she come?” he asked. “The library?”
“That would seem likely,” Bogo replied. He flipped his brown hair to one side and smiled slyly. “What are you thinking?”
Ghost’s glare stole the wizard’s mirth. “That is none of your concern,” he rasped with sudden anger, pushing past Bogo to the door. “If you are thinking of making any moves against Cadderly on your own . . .” He let the implication hang in the air.
“Well, let us just say that the consequences of failure can be terrible indeed,” Ghost finished, and he started away. He turned back immediately, though, his gaze directing Bogo to the pile of blankets that had hidden Ghost. “Do watch your back, young wizard” Ghost said evenly, then he coughed a wheezing laugh and went to his room, in the corner of the north wing, halfway between Cadderly’s room and the room occupied by Avery and Rufo.
“From the library, from the mountains,” Ghost mused, closing the door behind him. “well, we shall see if Lady Maupoissant follows her path all the way to Carradoon.” Ghost sat on his bed and summoned the Ghearufu. Using its powers, he sent his thoughts out of the town, to Vander, in the farmhouse.
Ghost felt the firbolg’s typical revulsion and knew from its depth that Vander was angry both with the situation at the farm and with Ghost’s intrusion.
Let me in, Vander, the wicked man teased, confident that the firbolg could not deny access even if he tried, Vander was Ghost’s chosen victim, his special target, and with Vander alone, Ghost could make the body transfer from almost any range. He felt the sharp, burning pain as his spirit stepped out of his body, and then he was floating, flying on the winds, propelled straight for the firbolg’s shell. As he entered the giant body, he knew that Vander had entered his, back in the room at the Dragon’s Codpiece.
Do not leave the room, Ghost instructed telepathically through the continuing mental link. Admit no visitors, particularly not that foolish wizard, Bogo Rathl
Ghost willed away the Ghearufu and considered his surroundings. Curiously enough, he was in a barn, surrounded by stabled horses and cows. The man in the firbolg’s body shook his head at Vander’s continuing surprises and made his way to the large door.
The farmyard was quiet under the light of the westering moon, and the house, dark; not a single candle burned in any window. Ghost made his way across to the porch and heard a shuffle up above.
“It is only the master,” he said to the unseen guards. “Gather the others and come into the barn, all of you. The time has come to tighten our noose.”
Just a few minutes later, the entire band of nineteen remaining Night Masks assembled around their leader. Ghost noted that one of his henchmen was missing, but he said nothing about it, realizing that Vander probably knew what had happened to the man and that he might confuse them all by questioning the absence while wearing Vander’s form.
He drew a quick map on the ground in front of him. “I have word that a woman is on her way to Carradoon from the Edificant Library” he said, indicating the location of the mountain structure. “There are only a few trails down the mountains, and they all exit in this general area. She should not be hard to find.”
“How many should we send?” one of the assassins asked.
Ghost paused as much to consider the angry edge to the man’s tone as to consider the question itself. Perhaps the missing Night Mask had met an unfortunate demise at Vander’s impulsive hands.
“Five,” Ghost said at last. “The woman is to be killed, as are any who travel beside her.”
“It could be a large and formidable band,” the same assassin argued.
“If so, then kill only the woman and be gone from there,” Ghost snapped back, his firbolg-strength voice resounding off the barn’s walls.
“Which five?” asked one of the group.
“Choose among yourselves,” Ghost replied, “but do not take this woman lightly. She is, by all reports, formidable indeed.
“Another group of five is to strike within the town,” Ghost went on. “Our information was correct. Cadderiy stays at the Dragon’s Codpiece. Here,” he said, extending his map to show the lakeside section of Carradoon and indicating the lane running along the shore, “on Lake view Street. Secure positions near the inn, where you will be at my ... at Ghost’s call. But take care to be far enough out of reach so as not to arouse suspicion.”
“With five stringers to open a line of contact to the group within the city?” the same questioning assassin put in,
“That is our usual method,” Ghost answered calmly.
“That will leave only four here at the farmhouse, excluding yourself,” the angry assassin reasoned. Ghost did not understand the problem.
“If we are forced to maintain a continual guard over the girl-“
“The girl?” Ghost didn’t mean to sound so startled.
The assassin, and several others, cocked an eye curiously. “The girl that Mishalak died for,” he said contemptuously. Ghost saw a problem building, and he scowled immediately to force the upstart back on the defensive.
“I do not question your decision to let her live,” the assassin quickly explained. “Nor do I deny that Mishalak deserved death for drawing a weapon against you, the task-master. But if only four of us remain to guard the farmhouse, then the girl becomes a threat.”
It all made perfect sense to the cunning impersonator. Vander’s soft heart had caused problems before now. Oftentimes the firbolg was too intent on honor, placing the foolish notion above his duty. Ghost spent a moment considering how he might punish the giant, then smiled widely as a typically fiendish idea came into his head.
“You are correct,” he said to the assassin. “It is time for you to end that threat.” The man nodded eagerly, and Ghost’s smile widened, the wicked man thinking how furious Vander would become, and how helpless, impotent, Vander would be. The proud firbolg would hate that most of all.
“End that threat this night,” Ghost purred, “but, first, you and your friends might have your way with her.” All about the ring, the evil assassins smiled. “We cannot survive on duty alone!”
That brought a cheer from the group.
“Go for the mountains this night as well,” Ghost continued. “I do not know how many days away this Lady Maupoissant is from Carradoon, but she cannot be allowed to enter the town.”
“Maupoissant?” one of the assassins, an older killer with salt and pepper hair, piped in.
“You know the name?”
“Nearly a decade ago, we killed a wainwright by that name,” the man admitted, “a wagon maker and his wife. And we were paid handsomely for the task, I must say.”
“The name is unusual and she is, by my informant’s words, from Westgate,” Ghost reasoned. “There could be a connection.”
“Good,” said the man, drawing a dagger and running the flat of the blade slowly along his bony cheek. “I always like to keep it in the family.”
The nineteen Night Masks were pleased to see their unpredictable firbolg taskmaster joining in the laughter, the giant’s heartfelt roars smothering their own. They were nervous; the time to kill was drawing near, and adding this “Lady Maupoissant” to the victim list was akin to smearing icing on an already delicious cake.
“What time is it?” Ivan asked, rolling out of his blankets and giving a profound stretch.
“It is hours past the dawn,” Danica answered sharply, privately berating herself for being foolish enough to take the last watch.
“Ye should’ve woked me up,” Ivan complained. He started to sit, then changed his mind and fell back into the bedroll in a heap.
“I have,” Danica muttered, though the dwarf was no longer listening. “Six times!
“But not again,” the fiery woman whispered. This time she was prepared. She took up two small buckets, filled with the icy cold water of a nearby mountain stream. Stealthily, she slipped up to the dwarves, their bedrolls having merged from their typically wild slumber during the night into a single large tangle. Danica sorted out the mess and moved the blankets aside enough to reveal the backs of hairy necks.
Pikel’s presented the most problem, since the dwarf wore his beard pulled back over his ears and braided with his long hair (which he had recently redyed forest green) halfway down his back. Gently Danica moved the tousle aside, drawing a semiconscious “Hee hee,” from the snoozing dwarf, and lifted one of the buckets.
The next thunderous roars resounding from the camp sent animals for nearly a mile around scurrying for cover. Even a fat black bear, out to catch some morning sunshine, raced through a tangle and up the side of a thick oak, sniffing the air nervously, fearfully.
The dwarves ran about in circles, crashed into each other several times, and threw their blankets into the air.
“Me weapon!” Ivan cried in distress.
“Oo oi!” Pikel wholeheartedly agreed, unable to locate his tree-trunk club.
Ivan canned first, noticing Danica standing next to a tree, her arms folded across her chest and her grin spreading from ear to ear. The dwarf stopped his running altogether and regarded her with dart-throwing eyes.
He should have looked out for his brother instead.
Pikel hit him broadside, and the two flew away into some brambles. By the time they extricated themselves and had stomped back into the camp, their beards were thrown wildly about and their nightshirts seemed almost furry with burrs.
“Yerself did that to us!” Ivan shouted accusingly at Danica.
“I wish to be in Carradoon no later than tomorrow,” the woman replied just as angrily. “I welcomed your company, but did not know it would mean holding camp until after noon each day! I thought dwarves were industrious!”
“Oooo” Pikel moaned, ashamed of his perceived laziness.
“Not our fault,” Ivan muttered, also on the defensive. “It’s the ground,” he blurted. “Yeah, the ground. Too hard and comfortable for a dwarf to want to get himself up in the morning!”
“You have forfeited breakfast,” Danica scolded.
“When halflings shave their feet!” Ivan roared, and Danica suspected—correctly—that she was overstepping her bounds. Throwing ice-cold water down the backs of sleeping dwarves was one thing, but denying them food was something altogether different, something downright dangerous.
“A quick meal then,” she conceded, “then we are off.”
Sixteen trout, four tankards of ale (each), half a sack of biscuits and three bowls of berries (each) later, the dwarven brothers gathered their belongings and skipped off down the mountain trails behind Danica. Impresk Lake was clearly visible whenever they came to an open ridge, and Carradoon soon came into sight as well, far below.
Despite Danica’s desire for haste, the trio took all caution in their trek. The Snowflake Mountains were a dangerous place, even in their southern reaches, where the charges of the Edificant Library dominated the region. With war brewing in the north and battles continuing back to the west, in Shilmista, the companions had to assume that the trails would now be even more dangerous.
Danica led the way, bending low to inspect every track, every bent blade of grass. Ivan and Pikel bobbed along behind her, Ivan in his deer-antlered helmet and Pikel wearing a many-dented cooking pot for lack of any true headgear. Even though Danica continually searched the ground as she traveled, the speedy monk had little trouble outpacing the dwarves and forced them to scurry along just to keep up.
Danica slowed considerably; Ivan and Pikel nearly ran her down. “Uh-oh,” Pikel muttered, seeing Danica’s curious expression.
“What’d ye find?” Ivan asked quietly, pulling his brother along behind him.
Danica shook her head, unsure. “Someone has passed this way,” she declared.
“Avery and Rufo,” Ivan replied.
“More recently,” Danica said, standing straight again and taking a long, hard look at the nearby brush.
“Coming or going?” Ivan pressed.
Danica shook her head, unable to decide. She was confident that her guess had been correct, but what bothered her was the nature of the tracks, the scratching marks made over the apparent boot prints. If someone had crossed this trail earlier that morning, then they had gone to great lengths to conceal their tracks.
Ivan looked down at the unremarkable ground and, scratching confusedly at his yellow beard, produced yet another stubborn burr. “I don’t see tracks,” he huffed.
Danica pointed out a slight depression in the ground, barely visible, then indicated the pattern that made her believe that brush had been scraped over the ground.
Ivan snorted in disbelief. “That all ye got to go on?” he asked loudly, no longer afraid of the volume of his voice.
Danica didn’t even try to hush him. She remained confident of her guess; she could hope only that some ranger, or one of Elbereth’s elven kin, perhaps, was in the region. If not a ranger or an elf, then Danica felt certain that these tracks had been made by someone intent on concealing himself.
In the wilds of the mountains, that rarely boded well for travelers.
A few hundred yards down the trail, Danica found further signs of passage. This time even Ivan could not discount the obvious boot print in the soft trail, though half of it had been just as obviously brushed away.
The dwarf put his hands on his hips and looked about, focusing on the crook of a low branch hanging over the trail.
“I seen some rocks aside the trail just a dozen yards back,” the dwarf began.
“Uh-oh,” muttered Pikel, suspecting what his brother was getting at.
“Got some big enough trees hanging over the trail,” Ivan continued, not hearing Pikel’s flustered sigh. He looked at Danica, who seemed not to understand.
“Could set us a trap,” Ivan spouted. “Could haul a rock up one of them trees and—“ Pike slapped him across the back of the head.
“You’ve tried that before,” Danica reasoned from the sour look on Pikel’s face.
Pikel groaned and Ivan glared at him, but the yellow-bearded dwarf took no retribution against his brother. They had indeed tried that trap before. Although Ivan stubbornly, if with little real conviction, insisted that it had been a success (they had clobbered an ore with the rock), Pikel just as stubbornly insisted that the meager kill had hardly been worth the terrific effort of putting the rock in the tree in the first place.
Knowing that this time there would be another witness, Ivan would have conceded the point and gone along without further mention of the trap and Pikel’s assault—it was only a slap, after all—but then, without explanation, Pikel whipped his club up in front of Ivan’s face. To Danica, standing to the side, it seemed clear that Pikel tried to halt the weapon’s momentum short of Ivan, but the club still connected with Ivan’s great nose. It knocked him back several steps and sent a stream of warm blood flowing over the dwarfs hairy lip.
“What’d ye . . .” Ivan stammered, hardly believing the attack. He took up his double-bladed axe, snarled, and stepped toward his frantically squeaking brother.
Pikel couldn’t explain the action to either Ivan or Danica, but he did manage to turn his fat club around in time, revealing a heavy dart buried halfway into the hard wood.
Now came Ivan’s turn to do his brother a good deed. Looking to the thick bushes past Pikel, to where his warrior instincts immediately told him the dart had come from, he saw a crossbow leveled Pikel’s way.
A tall form fell from a branch to land softly behind Danica.
Ivan’s pointing finger made Pikel turn about.
“Uh-oh” the green-bearded dwarf squeaked, knowing he had no time to get out of harm’s way.
Ivan hit him just before the quarrel, though, taking him down in a perfect tackle as the bolt flew harmlessly past. Ivan did not relent. As he rolled, he heaved Pikel right over him, and Pikel understood the tactic, likewise heaving Ivan back over him. Like a rolling boulder the dwarven brothers barreled into the brush, forcefully enough to tangle the two men concealed there.
The Night Mask behind Danica, his sword bared and held high, had no reason to believe that the woman, intent on the spectacle of the dwarves, even knew that she was about to die. His surprise was complete when Danica snapped into a bend at her waist, her leg shooting out behind her, high enough to connect on the man’s chest.
He flew back several feet, slamming into a tree trunk heavily, but managed to regain his dropped sword. More wary, he began backing away defensively, step for step with the dangerous woman’s approach.
Danica broke into a run and came in hard and fast, but skidded suddenly to her knees and dipped her head as another form appeared from behind the trunk and launched a shoulder-high swipe at her with a short, slender staff. The weapon banged hard against the tree, spitting flakes of bark.
Danica slipped one foot back under her and kicked out with the other, thinking to break this second enemy’s knee. He got his staff down in time to deflect the attack, though, then countered with several sharp and furious thrusts.
The young monk knew at once that she was in trouble. These were not ordinary highwaymen, though their dress seemed ordinary enough. She managed to fall out of the way as the other’s sword flashed at her skull, but took a hit on the hip from the fast-flying staff.
Then she was up in a crouch a few feet away from the two men, taking careful measure of their tempered approach, looking for an opening where there seemed to be none.
Ivan bit down hard, and continued to bite, until he realized from the steady stream of “Ooooo’s” that it was Pikel’s calf, not an enemy’s, in his mouth.
The dwarf scrambled to gain his footing in the tight quarters, branches and brambles grabbing at him with every move, and the nearest man landing no less than three punches on his already wounded nose.
Then Ivan was up, as was Pikel, with weapons ready. Ivan launched a vicious swipe with his axe, but his arm slipped through another thin but tough branch, shortening his reach so that he never got close to hitting the man.
Pikel yelped in terror and dove aside as his brother followed through, the wild flying axe nearly connecting. Again, albeit unintentionally, Ivan had saved his brother’s life, for as Pikel leaped aside, another crossbow bolt soared in, cutting the air between the dwarves with a sizzling sound and thudding heavily into the shoulder of the man facing Ivan.
Both brothers paused long enough to look behind them to the crossbowman, who was frantically recocking the weapon. Pikel went back at his attacker, who had finally extricated himself from the brush tangle, and Ivan turned to where his closest enemy had been standing.
The man was not to be seen, and Ivan suspected from the still-shaking bushes that he had been laid out fiat. Not to argue with good fortune, the dwarf howled and bolted back the other way, crunching out of the brambles to find the clear path leading to the crossbowman.
The swordsman was wounded; that was something at least. Danica’s kick apparently had done some damage, for he winced with every circling step he took. Danica had already come to the conclusion that the staff-wielder was the more formidable of the two, though. His salt-and-pepper hair showed experience, and the perfect balance of his measured strides made her realize that this one had spent his lifetime training in the fighting arts. His staff seemed puny compared to the other’s sword, but in his hands it was a deadly weapon indeed.
A sword cut sent the woman low; the staff clipped her shoulder and she had to dive over backward, rolling back to her feet just in time to prevent a killing follow-up attack.
Danica had used the roll to her advantage. Crouched in a ball on the way over, the monk had slipped one of her crystal-bladed daggers from her boot sheath.
The swordsman came on again, seeming more confident.
Danica planted her right foot out in front of her and pivoted on it, launching her left foot high and wide behind her as she twirled. She knew that her circle-kick attack would have no more effect than to force the swordsman’s blade out wide, and knew, too, that she had left herself vulnerable to the other attacker. She threw her supporting leg out from under her and completed her circuit as she crashed down to the ground, hearing the whiz of the staff as it flew inches above her head.
Danica broke her fall with one arm and kept her torso high enough from the ground for her to snap her other arm underneath her, releasing the dagger. Its short flight ended in the swordsman’s belly, and he fell back, eyes wide in disbelief and mouth wide in a silent scream.
The staff-wielder laughed and congratulated Danica for the cunning move, then came on relentlessly.
Pikel’s attacker, too, wielded a club, but he faced two serious disadvantages. First, Pikel’s club was much larger than his, and, second, he couldn’t possibly hit the thick-skinned and thicker-headed dwarf hard enough with a blunt weapon to do any serious damage. Lightning fast, he smacked Pikel twice on the shoulder and once on the pot helmet, which rang loudly.
Pikel hardly cared, accepting the three hits for the one he returned. His tree-trunk club caught the man’s exposed side and sent him flying from the brush to roll hard against the base of a tree.
The man’s face could not have reflected a greater terror if he had been tied to a stake in the path of a horse stampede when Pikel came rushing out in pursuit, his pot all the way down over his face, but his club leveled perfectly to squash the man between the tree and its thick end.
The man rolled aside and Pikel slammed in, snapping the young tree down and going headlong over its broken trunk.
“Oo,” the dwarf grunted as he skidded to a stop along the felled tree’s rough bark. Then came that loud ring again as his stubborn attacker rushed back in and planted a two-hander on the top of his helmet.
Ivan realized he would not get to the crossbowman before the man had the weapon readied, so he hoisted his axe above his head in both hands and roared, “Time to die, ye thieving dog!” as he let the weapon fly.
The man dove over backward, thrusting his crossbow up in front of him as a make-shift shield. The axe took it solidly, tearing it from the man’s hands and carrying it along on its flight until the whole connected with a tree, the crossbow falling in two pieces and the axe burying several inches into the trunk.
Ivan slowed his charge as the man came back up to his feet, drawing a long, thin sword, and not at all unnerved by the fine throw. In fact, the killer smiled widely at the now unarmed dwarfs approach.
“I could be wrong,” Ivan admitted quietly, his ferocious charge withering to a halt.
Danica punched and punched again, both attacks deflected harmlessly wide by the small staff. Her attacker countered with a straight thrust and Danica threw her forearm up at the last moment to push it out of line with her face. She countered with a snapping kick, but her attacker had his staff back in place quickly enough to slow the blow so that it did no real damage.
A groan drew Danica’s attention to the side. There stood the swordsman, his trembling hand at last closed around Danica’s bloodied dagger. The man’s face contorted in obvious agony, but also in obvious rage, and Danica suspected that he would soon be back in the fray. No matter how ineffective he might prove, she feared she could not handle both of these men at once.
Her temporary distraction cost her; the staff connected on her side. Danica rolled sidelong with the blow, diminishing its painful sting, and grabbed at her other boot as she went over and came back up to a crouch.
The staff-wielder leaped and spun in a flurry of defensive movements, anticipating another dagger throw. Danica pumped her arm several times, delicately shifting her angle with each forward movement. Each time, her intended victim placed himself in a position to block the throw or dodge aside.
The man was good.
Danica carefully aligned herself, pumped her arm once more, and threw. The staff-wielder easily slipped to the side, his expression revealing confusion that this skilled woman would have missed him so cleanly. He understood a moment later, when his companion groaned again, loudly.
The swordsman’s trembling hand slipped free of the golden tiger hilt of the dagger in his belly and inched upward to the silver dragon protruding from his chest. Helplessly, he fell back against a tree and slid down to the ground.
“You and I,” said the staff-wielder, and he accentuated his point with a furious rush and a blinding, dizzying series of thrusts and swipes.
Pikel looked mournfully at the tree he had felled, his pause for sorrowful contemplations costing him yet another ringing slam on his pot helmet.
The druidic-minded dwarf felt nothing but a most profound rage welling inside of him. Pikel had always been regarded by those who knew him as among the most even-minded of people, the slowest of the slow to anger. But now he had killed a tree.
He had killed a tree!
“Ooooooo!” the groan issued out of his trembling Ups, between gnashing, gritted teeth.
“Ooooooo!” He turned around to face his attacker, who backed off a step at the sheer strength of the dwarfs bared fury.
“Ooooooo!” Pikel tripped over the tree stump as he charged, diving headlong. His attacker turned to flee, but the sprawling dwarf caught him by the ankle. The man’s club came down hard on Pikel’s grasping fingers repeatedly, but the enraged dwarf felt no pain.
Pikel dragged the man in, grabbed him in both hands, and hoisted him into the air. Gaining his feet, the powerful dwarf held the man above his head and looked around curiously, as though he was wondering what to do next.
The club rang again on Pikel’s cooking pot helmet.
Pikel decided he had had enough. He impaled the man on the jagged edge of the broken tree stump.
Ivan whipped off his backpack, fumbling with the straps as his enemy rushed in. The dwarf blocked a sword thrust with the pack, tangling the sword in its straps long enough for Ivan to get out a package, six inches square and carefully wrapped.
The swordsman yanked away and tore the pack from his blade, then looked back to the dwarf curiously.
Ivan had ripped open the box and removed its contents: a toy he had been making for Cadderly ever since the young priest’s heroics against the evil Barjin.
The black adamantite border of the spindle-disks con-trasted-mesmerizingly with the semiprecious crystal center. The swordsman paused, wondering what purpose these twin disks, joined in their center by a small rod, might possibly serve.
Ivan fumbled to get his fat finger through the loop in the string wrapping that small rod. He had seen Cadderly use this type of toy a thousand times, had marveled at how the young priest so easily let the disks roll down to the end of their cord, then casually, with a flip of his wrist, sent them spinning back to his waiting hand.
“Ye ever seen one of these?” Ivan asked the curious swordsman.
The man charged; Ivan flung the disks out at him. The man got his sword in the way to block, then eyed his weapon incredulously, regarding the ample nick the harder adamantite had caused.
Ivan had no time to gloat over the integrity of the craftsmanship, though. His throw had been strong, but, unlike Cadderly, he had no idea of how to recall the spinning disks. They hung near the end of the string, spinning sidelong.
“Ooooooo!” Pikel’s rush from the side turned the swordsman about. He sidestepped the raging dwarf and regained his balance as Pikel swung about, scraping one foot on the ground for leverage to begin yet another furious charge.
This time, the green-bearded dwarf stopped short of passing the man, instead launching a series of furious blows with his heavy club. The swordsman worked hard, but managed to keep out of harm’s way.
Ivan shoulder-blocked Pikel aside.
“This one’s mine!” the gruff dwarf explained.
The swordsman smiled at the dwarfs apparent stupidity—together these two could have easily finished him.
His smile went away—literally—when Ivan suddenly hurled the spindle-disks again. This time, surprisingly, the small weapon was not attached to the dwarfs finger, had no encumbrance at all as it zipped past the swordsman’s futile attempt to block.
The man’s head snapped backward viciously and his face seemed to melt away when the adamantite disks connected squarely, removing every visible tooth, smashing apart his nose and both cheekbones, and neatly tucking his chin up under his upper jaw.
“Didn’t think a dwarf could throw like that, did ye?” Ivan bellowed.
The man stood staring in disbelief; his sword fell to the ground.
“Oo,” Pikel muttered as the man’s head rolled freely to one side, for only then did either of the brothers realize that Ivan’s powerful throw had snapped the man’s neck.
Ivan reiterated Pikel’s grim thought. “Oo.”
Kick and swipe, punch and spearing thrust.
Danica and the staff-wielder moved in vicious harmony, attacking and parrying with incredible speed. For seconds that stretched into minutes, neither scored any hit at all.
But in the heightened competition, the adrenaline pumping fiercely, neither seemed to tire in the least.
“You are good, Lady . . . ,” the staff-wielder remarked, his voice trailing off as though he had meant to say more. “As I expected you would be.”
Danica could hardly reply. Had the man just teased her, almost uttering her name? How could he know? A hundred thoughts raced through Danica’s mind with the sudden suspicion that this was not a random ambush. Is Cadderly safe? she wondered frantically. And what of Avery and Rufo, who had come down this same path just a couple of days before?
Thinking her distracted, the Night Mask came in viciously.
Danica dropped straight to the ground and kicked out, connecting on the man’s knee hard enough to halt his rush. Danica stepped ahead, coming up right in the man’s face. She took a painful hit on the shoulder for her efforts, but got in one of her own, a snapping chop to the man’s throat. In the single instant the man was forced to pause and gulp for breath, Danica got one hand planted on his chin and the other around the back of his head to grab a clump of hair.
The man dropped his staff and clamped his hands desperately onto Danica’s wrists, preventing her from twisting his head around. They held the pose for several moments, with Danica simply not strong enough to continue the intended maneuver.
The man, sensing his superiority, smiled wickedly.
Never releasing her grip, Danica leaped and rolled right over his shoulder, letting her weight do what her strength could not. They twisted and squirmed, Danica bending her knees to keep her full weight on the hold. The man wisely dropped to the ground, but Danica rolled again, under and to the side, now with her forearm locked tightly under the man’s chin.
He gasped futilely for breath, scratched and clawed at Danica’s arms, then shoved his own hand into Danica’s face, probing for her eyes.
Danica felt the hardness of a stone under her hip and she quickly shifted again, putting the man’s head in line. Frantically, brutally, the young monk realigned her grip on the man’s hair, leaving the back of his head exposed, and began slamming him down to the stone.
Still, he could not breath; all the world disappeared in a darkening fog.
“He’s dead!” Ivan cried, and Danica realized only then that the dwarf had been uttering the words over and over.
Horrified and sorely bruised, the young woman released her grip and rolled away from the man, fighting back her nausea.
“That one’ll be gone soon, too,” Ivan said calmly, indicating the man slumped against the tree, two daggers protruding from his bloody torso. “Unless we tend his wounds.”
The man seemed to hear and looked pleadingly at the three companions.
“We must,” Danica, composed again, explained to the dwarves. “I think this one knew my name. There may be a conspiracy here and he”—she pointed to the man against the tree—“can tell us what it is.”
Ivan shrugged his agreement and took a step toward the man, who seemed to take some comfort in the fact that his life would be spared. But there came a click from the side, and the man jerked violently a moment later, a crossbow quarrel next to the silver-hilted dagger.
The lone surviving Night Mask, wounded with a crossbow quarrel protruding from his shoulder, crashed through the brush, on the edge of delirium from the searing pain and the loss of blood. One thought dominated his thoughts: he had failed in his mission. But at least he had stopped his cowardly comrade from revealing the greater mission-rule number one to the merciless band.
The man didn’t know where to run. Vander would kill him when the firbolg learned that Lady Maupoissant had survived—the man regretted now that he had chosen his one remaining shot to finish the potential informant instead of trying again for Danica. Then he took heart as he reminded himself that even if he had been able to hit Danica, even if he had killed her, the dwarves would have had their informant and the more important plan to eliminate Cadderly would have been in jeopardy.
Still, the man regretted the decision, all the more when he heard the pursuit. Even wounded and weakened, he was confident that he could outrun the short-legged dwarves. When he looked back over his shoulder, though, he saw the young monk, flying effortlessly through the brush, gaining on him with every sure-footed stride.
The trees and brush opened up to more barren, rocky ground, and the desperate man smiled as he recalled his immediate terrain. He was a Night Mask to the bitter end, loyal and proud. His duty, wicked though it often was, had been his all, a dedication bordering on obsession.
The cruel monk was only a few strides behind him, he knew.
Loyal and proud, he never slowed as he came upon the edge of the hundred-foot cliff, and his scream as he leaped into the air was one of victory, not terror.
Long shadows of the day’s last light streaked across the barn’s floor and walls. Gray webs glistened across gaps in the rafters, then went dark as the sun slipped farther away. Vander leaned against the wooden wall, glad to be back in his body again, but not so glad to learn what had transpired in the few short hours that Ghost had taken his form.
The farmer’s girl was dead, and her end had been most unpleasant.
Memories of the time he had fled to his homeland, the Spine of the World, when Ghost had caught up to him and taken his body, coursed through Vander’s thoughts, forcing the firbolg lower against the wall. For the proud firbolg, the defeat was complete. To Vander’s warrior sensibilities, this was the ultimate humiliation. He could accept being defeated in honest battle, could kneel to a rightful king, but Ghost had dared to take that one step farther; Ghost had taken Vander’s valor, his honor, his very identity.
“Have they returned?” the firbolg snapped at the black-and-silver robed man as soon as he appeared at the barn door.
“The trip to the mountains would have taken them all of last night,” the Night Mask replied, as if he sensed Vander’s frustration. “Likely, they have not yet even encountered Lady Maupoissant.”
Vander looked away.
“The line has been set up to Carradoon, and the group has taken position near the Dragon’s Codpiece,” the assassin went on hopefully.
Vander eyed the man for a long moment. He knew what the human was thinking, knew that the man had only blurted that information in the hopes that the news would be well-received and would spare him from the firbolg’s unpredictable wrath.
Unpredictable! Vander nearly laughed at the vicious irony of that thought. He waved the man away, and the Night Mask seemed more than happy to follow the silent command.
Vander sat alone once more in the deepening shadows. He took some measure of solace in the fact that the noose was apparently tightening around their latest target and that this business might soon be concluded.
Vander hardly began to smile before a frown again captured his visage. The business would be finished and another would soon begin. It would not end, Vander knew, until Ghost decided that the firbolg had outlived his usefulness.
The sun was gone, leaving Vander in the darkness.
“You have indicated that you wanted to be of help,” Ghost said to the surprised wizard. “Now I offer you that chance.”
Bogo Rath’s beady green eyes seemed to grow even smaller as he studied the sleepy-eyed man. He had just moved his small pack of belongings to the private room that Fredegar had provided, only to find the mysterious assassin sitting on his bed and waiting for him.
Ghost understood the wizard’s suspicion and his hesitation. Bogo did not trust Ghost (and rightly so) and Bogo’s agenda was his own. Surely Bogo wanted Cadderly dead, but Ghost knew that the opportunistic and ambitious young wizard was not working with the assassin band. Rather, he was working independently, hopeful that he might use them to meet his own ends. Ghost, above all others, could understand that self-serving methodology and, above all others, the wicked man knew the dangers that might accompany such actions.
“I am to serve as sentry?” Bogo replied, incredulous.
Ghost thought it over, then nodded—that was as good a description as he could think of. “For this minor exploration only,” he answered. “The time has come for us to learn a bit more about Cadderly’s room and personal defenses. I can do that, do not doubt, but I would not be pleased to have the other two priests of the library return to the inn while I am otherwise engaged.”
Bogo spent a long moment staring at the man. “You are so filled with riddles,” he said at length. “You can get near Cadderly, hint that you can get even closer, and yet, the young priest lives. Is it caution or macabre pleasure that makes you play the game?”
Ghost smiled, congratulating Bogo for his perceptive-ness. “Both,” he answered honestly, more than willing to tout his own prowess. “I am an artist, young wizard, and not a common killer. The game, for that is what it is, must be played on my terms and by my rules.” Ghost carefully chose his emphasis for that last sentence, letting it sound just enough like a threat to keep Bogo on edge.
“It is early for the hearth room,” Bogo reasoned. “The sun is just down. Most of the patrons are still at home, finishing their dinners. And I am not yet settled into my new quarters,” he added, a hint of dissatisfaction in his tone.
“Do you consider that so very important?” Ghost asked bluntly.
Bogo found no immediate reply.
“Take your dinner down in the hearth room,” Ghost replied. “It is not so unusual a practice for guests of the inn.”
“The priests went to the Temple of Deneir,” Bogo argued. “It is unlikely they will return within the hour you say you will need.”
“But they might,” Ghost said, his voice hinting of mounting anger. “Artist,” he reiterated, voicing each syllable slowly and clearly. “Perfectionist.”
Bogo gave up the argument and resignedly nodded in agreement. Ghost had indicated that he wouldn’t yet kill Cadderly, and the young wizard had no reason to believe otherwise. Certainly, if the weakling assassin had wanted to strike against the young priest, he could have done so at almost any time over the last few days, and he would not have had to go out of his way and engage Bogo to stand watch in the hearth room.
They left Bogo’s room together, Ghost stopping Bogo at the door and whispering to him, “Do inform young Brennan, the innkeeper’s son, that Cadderly wishes to take his dinner now.” Bogo cocked an eyebrow at him.
“It will get the door open,” Ghost explained, a perfectly reasonable lie.
Ghost turned into his own room, with Bogo continuing on to the stairway. The puny assassin silently congratulated himself for so easily handling the potentially troubling wizard. He willed the Ghearufu into sight as he slipped behind the protection of his partly opened door.
The industrious Brennan came hopping up the stairs a short while later, carrying a dinner tray balanced easily in one hand and a long and narrow package in the other. Ghost admired the spring in the teenager’s step, the vigor and boundless energy of awakening manhood for the handsome, if a bit slender, Brennan.
“Boy!” Ghost called out softly as Brennan turned the corner past Avery’s room and headed past the assassin’s door. Brennan stopped and turned to regard the curious man, following the waving motion of Ghost’s white-gloved hand.
“Let me deliver this and then I’ll get you whatever . . .” Brennan began, but Ghost cut him short with his upheld hand, this one, Brennan noted curiously, adorned with a black glove.
“My business will take only a moment,” Ghost said, the significance of his wry smile lost on the unsuspecting youth.
A split second later, Brennan found himself staring back into his own face, and to the hallway beyond. At first, he thought that the strange man had put up some sort of mirror, but then the image, his image, moved independently. And he, or at least his image, was now wearing the black and white gloves!
“What?” Brennan stammered, on the verge of panic.
Ghost shoved the trapped man back into the room and waded in, closing the door behind him, dropping the narrow bundle—he knew it now to be some sort of staff or rod—and setting the tray on his own night table.
“It is just a game,” Ghost purred, trying to keep the terrified victim from calling out. “How do you like your borrowed body?”
Brennan’s eyes darted about in search of some escape. Gradually, his terror shifted to curiosity; the man standing before him, wearing his body, certainly did not seem so ominous.
“I feel weak,” he admitted bluntly, then cringed, realizing that he might have offended the man.
“But you are!” Ghost teased. “Do you not understand? That is the point of the game.”
Brennan’s face crinkled in further confusion, then his eyes popped open wide as Ghost, moving with the speed of youth, clenched his borrowed fist and launched a roundhouse punch. Brennan tried to dodge, tried to block, but the weak body did not respond quickly enough. The fist slipped through the pitiful defenses, slamming Brennan between the eyes, and he was falling helplessly, with no strength to resist the waves of blackness closing over him.
Ghost regarded the body for a long while, trying to discern his next move. The prudent act, he knew, would be to strangle Brennan then and there, as he had done with the beggar on the road, and put one glove on the body to prevent the regeneration process from recalling the lad’s wandering spirit.
Other sensations argued against that course. The wretched assassin felt wonderful in the youth’s body, full of barely controllable energy, and with his passions fluctuating almost violently, beckoning him urgently toward base actions he had not seriously considered for decades. The impulsive notion came to Ghost to reach over and remove the boot and the magical ring, to kill Brennan in the weakling body and leave him dead. Ghost could then claim this form as his own until he had burned it out as he had nearly burned out the effeminate mantle.
He again wore the black and white gloves when his hands went around the weakling’s neck.
Ghost realized that he must not do it—not yet. He berated himself for even beginning to act on such a rash notion. Moving methodically, he tied and gagged his victim securely, dragged him behind the bed, and wedged him between the bed and the wall.
The ring had already begun its work, and young Brennan’s eyelids fluttered with the first signs of consciousness.
Ghost smashed him again, and again after that.
Brennan groaned through the gag and Ghost leaned in close, putting his lips to the trapped boy’s ear. “You must be quiet,” he purred, “or you will be punished.”
Brennan groaned again, more loudly.
“Would you like me to tell you the punishments I have planned for your disobedience?” Ghost asked, putting a finger into Brennan’s eye.
The terrified Brennan made no sounds and no movements at all.
“Good, wise lad,” Ghost cooed. “Now let us see what you have brought.” The assassin moved away and quickly unwrapped the bundle, revealing a ram-headed walking stick, finely crafted and perfectly balanced. Ghost had seen the marvelous item before, in Cadderly’s hands when the priest had gone to the wizard’s tower outside Carradoon. Only then did Ghost realize that the young priest had not been carrying the stick when he had returned down the road.
“How convenient!” he said, moving back over to Brennan. “I said I would tell you of the punishments, but here, let me show you instead” he said, patting the formidable club against his open palm.
Ghost’s face contorted with sudden rage, and he launched a two-handed overhead chop. He felt the magic of the weapon thrumming when he slammed the ram’s head down on Brennan’s shoulder, and smiled even more widely when he saw the skinny limb crumble under the weapon’s tremendous enchantment. Ghost had never fancied weapons, but he thought of keeping this one.
Ghost considered the wisdom of turning the walking stick over to Cadderly. The assassin was left in a quandary, for if the young priest was expecting the weapon’s return, he might seek out Fredegar, or the wizard in the tower, and either would likely pose larger, more dangerous, questions.
That would be the worst of the possibilities.
The artist-killer left the room a few minutes later, bearing the tray and the retied bundle for Cadderly, and leaving the crumpled, unconscious Brennan hidden behind the bed in a pool of blood. Ghost had beaten Brennan severely, and the young man in the pitiful body would soon have died, except for the persistent healing magic of the ring concealed under the boot.
Semiconscious, Brennan almost hoped he would die. A thousand fiery explosions seemed to be going off within him; every joint ached, and the evil man with the club had paid particularly painful attention to his groin and collarbone.
He tried to move his head but could not; tried to wriggle his body out of the tight cubby, despite the pain, but found he was securely bound in place. He reflexively coughed up another gout of blood, his survival instincts barely managing to force the warm liquid past the gag so that he would not choke on it.
Broken, Brennan prayed that this torment would soon end, even if that end meant death. He did not know, of course, that he wore a magical ring, that he would soon be healed once more.
Cadderly wasn’t thinking of dinner, wasn’t thinking of anything at all beyond the alluring song playing in his mind as he turned the pages of the Tome of Universal Harmony. The book had offered him shelter once again, had chased away the images of Avery and Rufo—they had come back to see Cadderly that morning, and had again been abruptly turned away—and all the other troubles weighing heavily on the young priest’s shoulders.
Under the protection of the sweet song of Deneir, Cadderly felt none of that weight, but sat straight and tall. He worked his arms out to the sides when they were not engaged in turning the pages, in a manner similar to the meditative techniques Danica had once shown him back at the Edificant Library. Back then, these movements had been simple exercise, but now, with the song flowing through his every movement, Cadderly felt the strength, his inner strength, coursing through his limbs.
“I have your supper!” he heard Brennan call from behind him, and he knew from the young man’s volume that Brennan had probably called him several times and knocked loudly on the door before that. Embarrassed, Cadderly closed the great book and turned to meet the young man.
Brennan’s eyes opened wide.
“Excuse me,” Cadderly apologized, looking around helplessly for something with which to cover up. He was naked from the waist up, his well-muscled chest and shoulders glistening with sweat, and the rippling muscles of his waistline, newly trim from the meditative exercises over the tome, quivering from the recent exertion.
Brennan quickly composed himself, even flipped Cadderly a towel from the dinner tray with which he could rub down.
“It would seem that you could use the meal,” Ghost offered. “I did not know that reading could be so strenuous.”
Cadderly chuckled at the witticism, though he was a bit confused that Brennan had made such a remark. The young man had seen him at his reading many times before, and many times involved, as he was now, in the meditative exercises.
“What have you there?” Cadderly asked, seeing the long and narrow bundle.
Ghost fumbled with the item, still unsure if the young priest had expected it or not. “It came in just this afternoon,” he explained, “from the wizard, I would assume.” He unwrapped the bundle and handed the fine walking stick to Cadderly.
“Yes, Belisarius,” Cadderly replied absently. He waved the walking stick about easily, testing its balance, then tossed it casually on the bed. “I had nearly forgotten about it,” he remarked, and added with obvious sarcasm, “I wonder what mighty enchantments my wizard friend bestowed upon it!”
Ghost only shrugged, though secretly he was gnawing at his lower lip, angry now that he had decided to return the unlooked-for present.
Cadderly gave the young man a wink. “Not that I will ever find use for it, you understand.”
“We never know when a fight might fall our way” Ghost replied, sliding the tray onto Cadderly’s small table and arranging the silverware. Cadderly eyed him curiously, caught off guard by the grim tones and uncharacteristically reflective thought of the passion-driven youth.
The young man held a serrated knife in his hand for just a moment, with his hand only inches from Cadderly’s bare chest. For some reason, that dangerous image suddenly mattered to Cadderly; silent alarms went off inside him. The young priest fought them away, as easily as he rubbed the sweat from his neck, rationally telling himself that he was letting his imagination run wild.
The song played in the back of Cadderly’s mind. He almost turned about to see if he had left the tome open, but he had not; he could not. Shadows began to form atop Brennan’s slender shoulders.
Aurora.
For some reason he could not understand, Cadderly sensed again the unfathomable possibility that Brennan was considering striking him with the knife.
Suddenly, Brennan dropped the knife to the tray and fumbled about with the small bowl and plate. Cadderly did not relax; Brennan’s movements were too stiff, too edgy, as if Brennan was consciously trying to act as though nothing unusual had occurred.
Cadderly said nothing, but held the small towel around his neck with both hands, his muscles tight and ready. He did not concentrate on the man’s specific actions; rather, he shifted back to the young man’s shoulders, to the misshapen, growling shadows huddled there, black claws raking empty air.
Aurora.
The song played in the distant recesses of his mind, revealing the truth before him. But Cadderly, still a novice, still unsure of his power’s source, did not know if he should trust in it or not.
Cadderly could not recognize the shadows any more than to equate them with the same fearsome things he had seen perched upon the shoulders of the beggar on the road. He sensed that they boded evil, both then and now, sensed that they were images resulting from vile thoughts. Considering that Brennan had just been holding a cutting knife, that a short stroke could have driven the serrated instrument into Cadderly’s bare chest, those sensations did not put the young priest at ease.
“You must go,” he said to the youth.
Ghost looked up at him, confused, but again, the expression did not seem right to Cadderly. “Is something wrong?” the slender youth asked innocently.
“Go,” Cadderly said again, his scowl unrelenting, and this time the word held the strength of a minor magical enchantment.
Surprisingly, the young man held stubbornly to his position. The shadows on Brennan’s shoulders dissipated and Cadderly had to wonder if he had misread the signals, if those shadows represented something else altogether.
Brennan gave him a curt bow—another unexpected movement from the young man that Cadderly thought he knew quite well—and then prudently slipped from the room, closing the door behind him.
Cadderly stood staring at the door for a long time, thinking that he must be going mad. He looked back to the Tome of Universal Harmony, wondering if it was a cursed book, a book inspiring lies and a discordant song that sounded true to the foolish victim’s ear. How many priests had been found dead, lying across its open pages?
Cadderly labored for breath for a few crucial moments, at a crossroad in his life, though he did not realize it.
No, he decided at length. He had to believe in the book, wanted desperately to believe in something.
Still he remained in the same position, looking back to the door, to the tome, and lastly to his own heart. He realized that his meal was getting cold, then knew he did not care.
The emptiness within him could not be sated by food.
Bogo had given Ghost more than the hour the evil man had asked for, but the eager wizard decided to stay in the hearth room anyway, to see what he might learn. The talk among the growing number of patrons settled always on the rumors of war, but, to Bogo’s relief, none of the gathering seemed to have any idea of the depth of the danger that hung over their heads. When Aballister decided to march, most likely in the early spring, the army of Castle Trinity would have little trouble in bringing Carradoon to its knees.
The night deepened, the warm fires and the many conversations blazed, and Bogo, despite his fears that Ghost had already dispatched Cadderly, remained in the room, listening and chatting. Every time the door to the foyer opened, the young wizard looked up, anxious to note the return of the two priests, thinking that perhaps they would provide him with better information than the misinformed townsmen.
Bogo’s smile curled up when Kierkan Rufo entered a short while later, for the more formidable headmaster was not beside the angular man. Rufo headed right for the stairs, but Bogo cut him off.
“You are of the Edificant Library?” he asked, his tone sounding hopeful.
Rufo’s sharp features seemed sharper still in the flickering firelight, and his dark eyes did not blink as he regarded the curious-looking young man.
“Might I buy you some ale, or fine wine perhaps?” Bogo pressed, seeing no answer forthcoming.
Rufo’s answer dripped of suspicion. “Why?”
“I am not of the region,” Bogo replied without the slightest hesitation. The ambitious mage had played this scene out a dozen times in his mind, along with several other potential scenarios concerning the priest who would be stooge. “All the night, I have been assailed with rumors of war,” he explained. “And all the rumors hint that the one hope lies in the Edificant Library.”
Again Rufo did not respond, but Bogo noticed the vain man straighten his shoulders with some pride.
“I am not without skills,” Bogo went on, confident that Rufo was falling into his trap. “Perhaps I might aid in those hopes. Surely I would try.
“Let me buy you some wine, then,” Bogo offered after a short pause, not wanting to break his budding momentum. “We can talk, and perhaps a wise priest can guide me to where my skills would be most helpful.”
Rufo looked back to the foyer door, as though he expected, and feared, that Headmaster Avery would come pounding through at any moment. Then he nodded curtly and followed Bogo to one of the few empty tables remaining in the hearth room.
The talk remained casual for some time, with Bogo and Rufo sipping their wine, and Bogo quickly losing any hope that he would be able to get too much of the drink into the angular man. Rufo, who had been through many torments these last few weeks, remained cautious and guarded, covering his half-filled glass whenever Brennan, waiting on tables, made one of his frequent visits.
Bogo noted several times that the innkeeper’s son seemed to be regarding him suspiciously, but he attributed it to the lad’s natural curiosity that a stranger would have business with a priest from the library, and thought no more of it.
Bogo wasted little time in shifting the conversation to more specific topics, such as the Edificant Library and the ranking of Rufo’s portly friend. Gradually, casually, the wizard led the talk to include the other priest who was a guest at the inn. Rufo, cryptic from the start, backed off even more and seemed to grow somewhat suspicious, but Bogo did not relent.
“Why are you in town?” Bogo asked, rather sharply.
Rufo seemed to note the subtle shift in the increasingly impatient wizard’s-tone. He rested back in his chair and regarded Bogo silently.
“I must go,” the angular priest announced unexpectedly, bracing himself on the table and beginning to rise.
“Sit down, Kierkan Rufo,” Bogo snarled at him. Rufo looked at him curiously for a moment, and realized he had not, in the course of the conversation, told the man his name. A small whine escaped the angular man’s thin lips as he fell back into his chair, now almost expecting what was to come.
“How do you know my name?” Rufo demanded with as much courage as he could muster.
“Druzil told it to me,” Bogo answered bluntly. Again came that almost imperceptible whine.
Rufo began to ask another question, but Bogo promptly silenced him.
“You will answer and obey,” Bogo explained casually.
“Not again,” Rufo growled with defiance that surprised even himself.
“Dorigen thinks differently,” Bogo replied, “as does Druzil, who has been in your room for both nights you have been in town,” Bogo lied. “The imp has been in your room since before you and Avery occupied the room. Did you think to escape so easily, Kierkan Rufo? Did you think the battle was won despite the minor setback we were given in Shilmista Forest?”
Rufo found no words with which to respond.
“There,” Bogo said calmly, settling bick into his chair and flipping his stringy brown hair over to one side. “Now we understand each other.”
“What do you require of me this time?” Rufo asked, his voice sharp and a bit too loud for Bogo’s liking (especially since Brennan was nearby again, regarding the two men with open curiosity). Rufo’s visage continued to appear defiant, but Bogo was not concerned. The man was weak, he knew, else Rufo would have already left, or struck out against his revealed enemy.
“As of now, nothing,” Bogo answered, not wanting to set too many things into motion until he better understood what Ghost and the Night Masks were planning. “I will be nearby, and you will remain available to me. I have some specific things planned for my visit to Carradoon, and you, Rufo, will play a role in those, do not doubt.” He tipped his glass to the angular man and drained it, then rose from the table and started away, leaving Rufo lost in yet another un-resolvable trap.
“Be wary, young mage,” Bogo heard from the side as he took his first step up the stairs beside the hearth room’s bar. He turned to see young Brennan, casually wiping down the bar and regarding him dangerously.
“Are you addressing me?” Bogo asked, trying to sound superior, though he was indeed becoming a bit unnerved by the innkeeper’s son’s sudden attention.
“I am warning you,” Ghost, appearing as Brennan, clarified. “And know that it is the only warning you will receive. Your business here is as observer—that position determined by Aballister himself. If you interfere, you might find yourself lying in a hole beside Cadderly.”
Bogo’s eyes widened in shock, an expression that brought a satisfied smile to Ghost’s borrowed lips.
“Who are you?” the wizard demanded. “How . . . ?”
“We are many,” Ghost replied cryptically, obviously enjoying the spectacle of the squirming mage. “We are many and we are all about you. You were told that we do things properly, Bogo Rath. You were told that we take no chances.” Ghost let it drop there and turned back to his work at the bar.
Bogo understood the reason behind the sudden break in the conversation when Avery, just returned to the inn, and Kierkan Rufo walked past him up the stairs, heading for their rooms.
Bogo followed them at a safe distance, no longer certain that he would have further instructions for Kierkan Rufo, no longer certain of anything.