The Curse of Credesar, Part 1

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  Thayan Rommel lay awake on the metal table, wondering who had rescued him and why. It seemed someone had saved him from certain death only to make him a prisoner. He wondered if the seers were still inflicting torture on him. Perhaps they felt his death would have come too quickly from the worms and were seeking to prolong it.

  Sometime earlier a huge former seer had questioned him. Thayan had answered truthfully that he knew nothing of any companions--though he vaguely remembered the presence of others. The big man only insisted that in time Thayan would loosen his tongue.

  But the mysterious man hadn't returned since then, and Thayan was taking no chances. He'd already used his magic to help his body recover from all it had gone through, and now he was working on the chains. Ulden magic allowed rapid healing and could exert great force on certain metals. Yet so far the chains seemed sturdy, with no weakness in them he could exploit. He was a talented sorcerer, but he wasn't skilled enough to break solid iron without his link to amplify his power.

  Thayan didn't give up, though, for there was always a chance. With each passing moment, his hatred grew stronger. Despair was turning to rage, driving his efforts to break the chains. If he could flee somewhere and hide out, he could figure out a way to seek vengeance against his tormentors.

  The seers all blurred into one image in Thayan's mind--the face of Vangoss. The lord of the high council represented all that Thayan had come to despise, for he'd calmly ordered the Ulden student's harsh punishment. But Thayan lumped all the seers together, and he saw them and their ugly tower as a huge, unfathomable force of oppression that might never be toppled.

  "If I could tear it down stone by stone, I would," he whispered aloud. His voice sounded strange and bitter, as if someone else had spoken.

  Thayan wondered how his sister would view his rage and hatred. Would she condone it, or pity him for his mortal weaknesses? She'd been the only family he'd ever had. His father and mother still lived as far as he knew--deep in the grasslands of Tembros. But they were dead to him. They had sold Thayan and his sister to the Galds. He'd been forced to work for the mutants--doing all manner of unpleasant and dangerous tasks--while his sister was taken into the village shaman's dwelling. Death had been her only means of escape from a life of utter misery, and a worm had delivered it. Thayan had continued his labors until the seers had discovered him by use of their sorcery. They sent Gelshad fighters into the village to get him, and the elite warriors slaughtered every Gald that didn't manage to escape. While Thayan was shocked by the mercilessness of the Gelshads, he hated the Galds to the core of his being. He came to look upon the seers as his deliverers and would have given his life for them.

  "Not anymore!" he snarled through clenched teeth, the feeling of betrayal overwhelming him.

  The death they would have forced onto him was worse than anything the Galds would have inflicted. They had wanted him to share his sister's fate--a punishment even the savage mutants might have viewed as too harsh. At his trial, he'd told the seers what had happened to her, yet they still felt the need to send him to the same doom. And in their blind pursuit of justice, they had planted seeds of hatred inside him--more destructive than any weapon.

  Thayan made another vow to gods that he felt probably didn't exist or didn't care about mortal strife--a vow that he would live to see Vangoss dead, that he would somehow crush the heart of the lord of the seers.

  For a long while he lay dreaming of killing Vangoss and tearing down Valganleer, his hands knotted into fists. His heart had burned to black ash, soaked in hatred.