The voice appeared inside my head. Swinging to the fire, I ran to the rear, where the flames had not yet reached. Scrambling up to the stake, coughing and spluttering, I reached Megan. Around her there was no smoke; it swirled just out of reach, as if she were standing inside an invisible globe.
“Your powers are great,” I said.
“What a fine time for compliments!” she snapped. “Perhaps we should sit down here and discuss the finer points of magick.”
I cut through her bonds and took her by the hand. Swiftly she cast a spell. Instantly, her white robe changed to the color of rust and a leather cap appeared, covering her white hair. Smoke billowed around us like a mist as we descended to the meadow, dispersing only when we were some distance from the pyre. People were running and screaming around us, and we were not challenged as we slowly made our way across the meadow, past the outskirts of the river city, and on into the sanctuary of the trees.
At last safe, we made camp in a shallow cave, lighting no fire and needing none.
“It was a foolish act,” she told me, “but I am grateful for it.”
“I could not stand by and watch you murdered.”
“I know, Owen. You have a fine soul.”
Always uncomfortable with compliments, I changed the subject. “I hope Mace escaped from them.”
She chuckled. “Yes, he did. Did you like the way I changed the sorcerer’s search spell?”
“The golden light? It was a master’s touch, and I should have known it was you. He looked like a hero from legend.”
“The people will long remember it.”
“Perhaps, but the memory will fade once Mace is gone, when they see he is no Morningstar.”
“If they ever see it. He chose the name, Owen, and now, I think, the name has chosen him.”
“That is a riddle I cannot fathom.”
“Give it time, my boy. Tell me, how will the events of today be seen?”
I smiled then. “A dramatic rescue by the lord of the forest. Not all the count’s men could prevent it.”
She nodded, her face solemn. “Mace was lucky today. They didn’t need a search spell. He was in full view all day at the contest.”
“Why, then, did they not take him? Were you using your powers?”
“No. There was no need. Azrek has a serpent’s subtlety, and he assumed Mace would be more … circumspect. He believed there would be a rescue attempt but probably expected Mace to come disguised and arrive only when the crowds were thick. Hence the search spell. But Mace, with his casual arrogance, chose the best place to be, hiding in plain sight where no one would look.”
“As you say, Megan, he is a lucky man.”
“Luck has to be paid for, Owen,” she whispered, “and sometimes the price is very high.” Without another word she lay down and closed her eyes.
I shivered, for in that moment, my ghostly friend, I think my soul caught a glimpse of the future.
Then I, too, slept.
* * *
I awoke in the night to find a cool breeze whispering across the mouth of the cave, bringing with it the stealthy sounds of men moving through the undergrowth. Reaching out, I touched Megan lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes opened, and in the moonlight she saw me touch my fingers to my lips, warning her to keep silent.
Dropping to my stomach, I wormed my way to the cave mouth, peering out at the silhouetted trees. At first I saw nothing, but then the dark figure of a soldier, his breastplate gleaming in the eldritch light, edged forward. He was joined by another … and another. The first knelt, his pale hand extending down to the ground, tracing a line. Then he took a shining object from the pouch at his side and laid it on the ground. Immediately a faint blue-white light sprang up from the track. I swallowed hard, realizing that Megan and I had walked from that direction and feeling instinctively that the hunter was examining a footprint, mine or Megan’s, and was carrying a search stone.
The cave itself was partly screened by thick bushes, but in the bright moonlight there was no hope of the entrance escaping the keen eyes of the hunters.
It is a fearful thing to be hunted, but it is doubly unmanning during the hours of night. I don’t know why this should be so, save to note that our most primal fears are of the dark. Moonlight, though beautiful, is cold and unearthly. Nothing grows by moonlight, but all is revealed.
I glanced up, praying for clouds and total darkness, an all-covering blanket of black that would shield us from the soldiers. But almost immediately my fears welled anew, and I imagined the hunters, aided by the search stone, creeping forward purposefully within that darkness, unseen and deadly, their cold blades seeking my heart. No, I prayed again. No darkness. Please!
I was trembling now, but Megan’s hand came down upon my arm, gripping my wrist, then patting the skin. I glanced toward her and licked my dry lips with a dryer tongue.
“Fear not,” she whispered. “They will not see us.” Extending her hand, she pointed at the leading soldier. He cried out and dropped the stone, which fell to the earth and blazed with a fierce light, causing the soldiers to shield their eyes. Leaning her back against the cave wall, Megan gestured with her right hand. The entrance shimmered, and as I looked toward the soldiers, it seemed I was viewing them through a screen of water.
Slowly they approached the rock wall. There were some twenty of them gathered now, lean and wolflike, swords in their hands. They halted some few feet before us, scanned the ground, then moved on.
After a while there was silence beyond the cave.
“What did you do?” I ventured at last.
“Think through your fear, Owen,” she advised. “Do not let it master you. The illusion is no more than you could have achieved. Any man who can create the Dragon’s Egg should find little difficulty in displaying a wall of rock where there is none.”
I felt foolish then, for she was right. The rock face was dark; it would take little skill to cast an image across the cave mouth, and the soldiers had been half blinded by the destruction of the stone.
“But I could not have destroyed their stone,” I pointed out defensively.
“No,” she agreed, “that you could not do. Azrek has a powerful magus at his side, and I think you will need my … skills before this game is played out.”
“What you did was sorcery,” I said softly. “No trick with light and gentle heat. You burned a stone to dust and ash.”
“I am allied to no dark powers, Owen. Sorcery and magick are not as far removed from one another as you would like to believe. Magick is, as you rightly say, merely tricks with light, illusions. But sorcery is a different kind of … trick. All I did with the stone was to create enormous heat. It is not difficult; it is merely a more powerful variation of the warming spell.”
“How is it done?” I asked her.
“I cannot teach you sorcery in a single night, Owen, nor would I wish to try. But here is your first lesson: When you rub your hands together, you create heat. Well, a stone is not as solid as it looks. It is made of more component parts than there are stars in the sky. I make them rub against one another. The heat generated is immense.”
“You are mocking me, lady. A stone is a stone. If it was, as you say, made up of many parts, then air would be trapped within it and it would float on water.”
She shook her head. “All that you see in this world is not all that there is, Owen Odell. And your logic is flawed. I can make a stone float or give a feather such weight that you could not carry it. But these lessons can be for another day. For now I want you to tell me why you did not create the rock wall illusion.”
“I did not think,” I admitted. “I was frightened—close to panic.”
“Yes, you were. Fear is good, for it makes us cautious and aids survival. Not so with terror. It is like slow poison, paralyzing the limbs and blurring the mind. You have courage, Owen, else you would not have stood up for me at the burning. But you are undisciplined. Never, when in danger, ask yourself, What will they do to me? Inst
ead think, What can I do to prevent them? Or did you think that magick and all the connected powers were merely discovered in order to entertain revelers in inns, taverns, and palaces?”
I was ashamed of my cowardice and said nothing, my thoughts hurtling back to childhood, when my father had constantly berated me for lack of skill in the manly arts. I did not climb trees for fear of the heights or learn to swim for fear of drowning. High horses frightened me, and the clashing of sword blades made me cry. My brothers took to the game of war like young lions, and upon them he showered praise. But Owen was a weakling, worthless, a creature to be avoided. The great Aubertain—how I hated him for his cruel courage, his arrogance, and his pride.
I gloried in his one weakness—fire. A long time before, when he himself was a child, he had been burned upon his left arm: The scars were still visible, white, ugly, and wrinkled, stretching from wrist to elbow. Even into middle age he would jump if a fire log cracked and spit sparks.
And then, one summer’s evening, a storehouse near the castle caught fire. Every villager and soldier ran to the blaze, human chains forming to ferry buckets of water from the deep wells to the men at the head of the lines. The fire was beyond control, and bright sparks flew into the night sky, carried by the breeze to rest upon the thatched roofs of nearby cottages.
My father, brothers, and I organized work parties, carrying water into homes as yet untouched and drenching the thatch. There was a two-story house close by. Sparks entered through an open window, igniting the straw matting that covered the ground floor. Flames billowed up.
I remember a woman screaming, “My baby! My baby!” She was pointing to an upper window. My father was standing beside me at the time, and I saw upon his face a look of sheer terror. But then, with a snarl, he tore loose his cloak, wrapped it around his face and shoulders, and ran into the burning building.
Moments later I saw him at the upper window with the babe in his arms. Climbing to the sill, he leapt to the yard below, his hair and beard on fire. He landed awkwardly, and we heard his leg snap, but he twisted his body as he fell to protect the infant he held. Men ran forward then, smothering the flames that writhed about him. The mother retrieved her babe, and my father was carried back to the castle.
I am ashamed to say that my hatred for him swelled, roaring up like the blaze around me.
“Why so melancholy?” asked Megan, and I shivered as my mind fled back to the present.
“I was thinking of my father.” I told her then of the unhappiness of my childhood and the story of the great fire that all but destroyed the estate.
“Do you still think you hate him, Owen?”
“No, but his treatment of me still causes me pain. The memories are jagged and sharp.”
“You are much like him.”
“You misread me, Megan. He is a warrior, a killer, a knight. I am none of these things, nor would I wish to be.”
“What do you wish to be?”
I looked out at the night sky, considering her question. “I would like to be content, Megan. Happy. I have known in the woods moments of genuine joy, like when Piercollo sang or when Mace brought the treasure back to the people. But not the happiness I dream of.”
“And what would bring it to you?”
“I do not know. Love, perhaps. A family and a quiet home. Fame. To be known as the greatest bard in the Angostin kingdoms.”
“These will not bring you what you seek,” she told me, her voice soft.
“No? How can you be sure?”
“There is a man you must first find. He will give you the answers.”
“He would need to be a great teacher, this man. Who is he?”
“You will know him when you meet him,” she answered. “Is your father still alive?”
I shrugged. “I have no knowledge of his affairs. I have not contacted my family for more than six years. But yes, I would think he is still alive. He was strong as an ox and would now be only forty-two years of age.”
“When this is over, Owen, seek him out.”
“For what purpose?”
“To tell him you love him.”
I wanted to laugh in her face, to ram home the stupidity of her words. But I could not. And anger flared in me then, a hot silent fury that was washed away by the sudden tears stinging my eyes.
6
I WEPT, AND Megan moved alongside me, her arms around me. “Let it go, Owen. Release it.” My head dropped to her shoulder, my eyes squeezed shut, and painful sobs racked my frame. At last I felt the cool breeze upon my back and sensed the coming of the dawn. Pulling back from her, I forced a smile.
“I am ashamed of myself, wailing like a child.”
“Where there is pain, there is often a tear or two.”
“Yes, but the pain is gone now, back to whence it came, locked away. Where do we go today?”
“We find Mace,” she told me. “But first let us view the enemy.”
Moving back from me, she watched the sun rise behind a bank of clouds that turned to gold before my eyes, the sky around it turquoise and blue. I felt my soul swell at the beauty of it. Slowly the sun rose through the golden cloud, and its rays pierced the flesh of vapor, spearing down to strike the rock face and the cave, illuminating the rear wall.
Megan gestured with her right hand. The wall shimmered, flattened, glowed … and disappeared, becoming a window that looked down upon a long hall. There were flags and pennants hung from poles on both sides of the hall and a long table that ran down its center. At the head of the table sat Azrek, eyes downcast and expression brooding. His fist crashed down upon the wood, and a golden goblet was sent spinning to the floor.
“I want him dead. I want his death to be hard.”
“We are seeking him now, my lord,” came a voice, but the speaker was not in view.
“Send out the Six.”
“I shall see that they are fed and then released, lord.”
“No!” stormed Azrek, rising to his feet, his pale face gleaming in the torchlight, his black hair hanging lank about his lean features. “I don’t want them fed. Let them feast on his heart.”
“Yes, sir … but …”
“But what, fool?”
“They are hungry. They will need to eat before they track down the Morningstar.”
“Then let them hunt their meat in the forest. There is plenty there. Succulent meat. Highland delicacies.” Azrek laughed, the sound echoing through the hall and whispering out into the cave. The unseen servant departed, and we heard the door close, then creak open moments later.
“What is it?” demanded Azrek.
“You will wish me to mark the Six with the soul of the Morningstar,” came a soft voice that seemed all too familiar. Yet I could not place it.
“Yes. Imprint the smell of it upon their senses.”
“There is no smell, sir, merely an aura that is his alone.”
“Spare me your pedantry. I pay you well, magicker, and what do you offer me in return? You promised me the Morningstar. Well, where is he?”
“Surely you do not blame me, sir. My light shone over him. It was then left to your soldiers to apprehend him. They failed, not I.”
“You all failed,” snarled Azrek, “and I will not tolerate it. The soldiers who fell back before his blade are now hanging by their heels, their skin flayed from their bodies. Be warned, magicker, I do not like to lose. And this task should be simplicity itself. One man in a forest. One creature of flesh and bone and sinew. Is that too much for you?”
“Not at all, sir. But using the Six will prove costly. They will not return; they will stay in the forest, hunting and killing, until they themselves are slain.”
“What is that to me?”
“It cost many lives, more than forty if memory serves, to create them.”
“They were only lives,” answered Azrek. “The world is full of lives.”
“As you say, sir. The Lord of Lualis has sent out criers to announce a larger reward of two thousand sovereigns f
or information leading to the apprehension of the Morningstar and twenty gold pieces for his companies—the hunchback, the giant, and the bard, Odell.”
“Ah yes, Odell … I would like to hear him sing. There are notes I shall teach him that he would not believe he could reach.”
“I am sure of that, my lord,” said the other smoothly, “but there are two other matters to which I must draw your attention. First, the woman Megan. I had the ashes raked, but there were no bones evident. She did not die in the flames.”
“How could that be? We saw her tied to the stake.”
“Indeed we did. I believe Odell, hidden by the smoke, climbed the pyre and freed her as the soldiers pursued the Morningstar.”
“So where is she now, magicker?”
“Why, sir, she is watching us,” he answered, his voice remaining even. The window in the wall appeared to tremble, and the castle hall beyond spun and rose. Down, down swept the image. Azrek seemed to swell and grow.
“Get back!” shouted Megan, but my limbs seemed frozen and I was unable to tear my eyes from the scene. Azrek looked at me—saw me as if from across a room. A second figure moved into view.
“How are you, Owen?” said Cataplas amiably.
He seemed unchanged from the master I had known, a long purple velvet robe hanging from his lean frame, his gray wispy trident beard clinging like mist to his chin. His hand came up with fingers spread. A small ball of flames flickered on his palm, swelling and growing.
Megan grabbed my arm, pulling me back. “Run, Owen!” she screamed.
Idly Cataplas tossed the flaming globe toward us.
We were at the cave entrance when it sailed through the window. Megan hurled herself at me, spinning me from my feet, just as a great explosion sounded and a tongue of flame seared out from the mouth of the cave, scorching the grass for twenty feet.
I rolled to my back. Megan was lying some way from me, her white robe smoldering.
“No!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet and running to her. In taking the time to push me clear she had suffered terrible burns to her left side. Her arm was blackened and split and bloody, and most of her hair had been scorched away. Her eyes opened, and she groaned.