The Black Elfstone

  “Aye? And what will you use to pay Harl back there for your drinks and your meal? Will you wash his dishes and sweep his floor?”

  Tavo resisted the urge to look behind him. “I’ll do what I must.”

  “You’ll do what you must.” The man in front of him shook his head. “I don’t know that you will. I don’t know that you’ll ever do anything again if you don’t pay me something for the trouble of talking to you. Just trying to help you out, a poor stranger come from another land, and you treat me as if I were a cutthroat after your purse. Well, now, what if I were? Do you think there is anything you can do about it? Do you think it possible?”

  Strong hands seized Tavo from behind, pinning him fast against the countertop. Harl, the barman. Tavo knew without having to try that he would not be strong enough to escape those hands. The burly man was already moving to Tavo’s backpack, fumbling with the catches. Others in the bar were getting to their feet, as well, sensing there might be a chance for them to share in whatever was found in the pack.

  Sensing blood in the water.

  Knives came out. Swords were lifted off tabletops. A general shuffling of bodies filled the sudden silence. Tavo caught a glimpse of the serving woman as she peeked out from the kitchen and quickly shut the door, knowing what would happen next.

  He heard the front door to the tavern close. His parents, his uncle, and Squit were gone.

  He searched for Fluken. No sign.

  “Let me go,” he said to the burly man.

  He said it so quietly that for a moment the other paused in the midst of his rummaging and stared at him, a sudden uncertainty in his eyes. Then he shook it off. “When I’m done.”

  “You’re done now.”

  The wishsong exploded from Tavo’s throat in a red-hot wave of power that slammed into the big man and threw him backward into his fellows. The magic shifted directions and picked up Harl and slammed him to the floor so hard that his head exploded in a red shower of blood and brains.

  Free, he turned to the room. “You don’t deserve to live, and I don’t think I’ll let you.”

  He went after them systematically, in groups where groups were to be found, and one by one when they tried to flee. The wishsong simply encapsulated them where it found them and broke them apart. Bones, organs, and blood flew everywhere, and the room became a charnel house of the dead and dying. He missed no one. Even those who might have thought they could gain the safety of the front or rear doors died trying. They begged and cried for him to stop, to let them live. But he wasn’t the sort to grant mercy. His magic was so powerful that its very use was an addictive drug he could not resist. Once he began to use it, he wanted to continue.

  And so he did here. All through the room, in every nook and cranny, under tables and behind the serving counter, anywhere a man might hide, he searched them out and put an end to them.

  When it was done and no one breathed or moved, and all but one lay dead, he knelt beside the burly man. There was such fear in the other’s eyes, such terror and regret. It gave Tavo a pleasure he could not begin to describe. He smiled at the man in a kindly way, seeing the pain etched on the other’s face, recognizing a seeping-away of life, a giving-up of hope.

  “You should have left me alone,” he whispered.

  Then he directed the magic to close the man’s windpipe and watched as he slowly choked to death.

  —

  Afterward, he stood in the midst of the carnage for a long time, taking in the looks on the faces of the corpses, trying to read in their shocked and terror-stricken expressions what they might have been thinking at the end. He found it odd and somehow appropriate that he could create these pained expressions out of his own pain. He was driven to use his magic for this purpose, to help him cleanse his pain and erase his confusion. Always, he wondered how he had come by such power. There were stories, but none seemed to fit. The man and the woman who had claimed to be his parents had never mentioned it. Or were deliberately hiding what they knew. He had thought to learn the truth from Tarsha, but Tarsha had taken whatever she knew with her, away to where he might never find it.

  He walked over to the counter and resumed eating. The food was good enough that he was not about to leave it. He ate hungrily, paying no attention to what lay strewn about him. He paused only when he caught a glimpse of the kitchen door opening and the frightened face of the serving woman staring in horror. She did not look at him but softly closed the door and went back inside, possibly to hide or to run. He shrugged it off. It didn’t matter to him what she did. He would not harm her. She had done nothing. He didn’t harm people who didn’t try to harm him first.

  Or, like Tarsha, betray him.

  He finished his meal and a final tankard of ale. He stripped a pair of boots and a cloak that was almost new from the dead men, hitched up his backpack, and went out the door into the night. To his astonishment, the storm with its winds and rains had passed, and the sky was clear. Stars shone, and a half-moon could be glimpsed through a thin screen of clouds. The chill of earlier was gone, and the air had warmed to a pleasant softness that gave him a sense of peace. He had thought to sleep but found he was no longer tired. He would walk this night until he reached a better place and sleep then.

  Sleep until the madness settled. Sleep until the memories of tonight faded. Sleep until the sun warmed the land and the damp had gone back into the earth to nourish the soil.

  And then?

  I am coming for you, Tarsha. Watch for me.

  He smiled to himself. Better days lay ahead.

  EIGHTEEN

  It was early morning when Drisker Arc walked back toward the village of Emberen to retrieve his two-man flit, Tarsha Kaynin at his side. He was already working out in his head how he was going to go about tracking down whoever was responsible for sending the men from the assassins’ guild to kill him. Having identified the guild as one operating out of Varfleet, it would be easy enough to find its lair and not too much harder to lay hands on the men who had come after him. What might prove much more difficult was identifying who had hired them. The guilds were notorious for their secrecy, especially when it came to giving up the names of clients. Once it was shown that you couldn’t be trusted with names, business had a tendency to drop off precipitously.

  As they walked, Tarsha questioned him about what he had found in the north. “Do you trust this creature?” she wanted to know. “What was it you called him?”

  “The Morsk. He’s a species of shape-shifter. And yes, I trust him enough to believe he would not lie about this. He has no reason to lie and every reason to be honest. He owes me a favor, and he knows that the danger posed by the invaders threatens him as well as us. What he told me was clearly the truth.”

  He had been thinking about the previous night, remembering how fierce she had been, how wild and uncontrolled. He was thinking he would have to watch her closely.

  “So we have men who can appear and disappear like ghosts? But what do they want? To conquer the Four Lands? How do they hope to stand against the armies of the Federation? The power of diapson crystal weapons will be too much for them, won’t it? The Southland soldiers will simply set fire to everything in front of them and these invaders will be swept away, no matter how hard they try to hide where they are.”

  Drisker looked off into the trees a moment. “You would think. But I worry there is more to this than we know. I think it would be a mistake to assume anything. In any case, it would be foolish to hope it will not end up affecting us. So we had better find a way to put up a united front before this army becomes too entrenched. The Druids at Paranor should lead that effort. The Morsk was right: They will be most at risk.”

  She pursed her lips. “Because they have magic, too?”

  “Yes. I don’t see how we can think otherwise. This enemy will likely consider them their greatest threat.”

  She did not question him further on this, but let the matter drop. They found the man who cared for Drisker’s small airship,
and asked to have it brought out and prepared for travel. The man barely spoke two words in response before hurrying off to retrieve the vessel from storage.

  Drisker waited a moment and then suggested he and Tarsha have something to eat while waiting.

  “Only if you agree to tell me how you think you will find the men who attacked us,” she countered.

  He doubted she would refuse to eat if he didn’t, but there was no reason not to tell her what he knew. So he nodded and started away, heading down the dusty main road that led through the center of the village.

  At one of the two inns that served food and drink, they found a table and seated themselves. It was crowded in the dining room, and a few heads turned to look. Not at him, Drisker thought, but at his striking young companion. They would be wondering what she was to him. Drisker ignored them. Let them think what they wanted. He signaled a server and they placed an order. Ale was brought along with fruit, cheese, bread, and pieces of last night’s roast pig, and they settled in to enjoy their meal. Tarsha managed to refrain from asking further questions until they were finished; then she started in again.

  “Will you tell me your plan now? Is there a way to find out who attacked us?”

  He smiled in spite of himself. “So impatient. But, yes, there is a way. All the men bore a symbol on their wrists, a marking of closed eyes leaking blood. It is the sign of the Orsis, an assassins’ guild working out of Varfleet. We’ll have to go there and follow the thread to wherever it leads.”

  She frowned. “These people, this Orsis Guild, they won’t want to tell us what they know, will they?”

  “Not likely. We must use gentle persuasion to convince them. How are you with gentle persuasion?”

  She laughed. “I think it best to leave the gentle persuasion to you.” She finished off her ale and leaned back. “I do look forward to observing your technique.”

  Smiling ruefully, he rose and went over to the bar to pay for their meal. When she joined him, they went out the door of the inn and down the roadway to the storage barn and their craft. The two-man was sitting out in a yard behind the barn, cleaned up and ready. Drisker thanked the manager and paid him extra credits for his trouble, then signaled to Tarsha to climb aboard. She did so without comment. She had said nothing since they left the inn, but she had not stopped watching him.

  When they were airborne, she loosened her restraining harness and leaned close. “I am not a child, you know,” she said quietly. “I don’t need to be protected from hard truths.”

  “Nor will you be,” he replied, his eyes directed straight ahead. “If there were anything to tell you—if there is ever anything to tell you—you will be told, no matter the difficulty I might have in doing so. You must do the same for me. You wish to train in the use of your magic, and that requires a sharing of truths. From me to you, and you to me.”

  “So I am free to be truthful with you?”

  Her hair was whipping about her face. “You are required to be so.”

  She sat back and was quiet again. Drisker flew the ship south past the mouth of the Valley of Rhenn before turning eastward toward the dark line of the Dragon’s Teeth. The day was warm and windless, the sky mostly clear of clouds, and the landscape below a tapestry of greens and browns with the Mermidon a crooked blue stitching that would lead them eventually to their destination when it joined with the Runne. Now and then, horsemen would appear, sometimes solitary and sometimes warding mule-drawn wagons laden with goods. There were no sightings of anything out of place or threats from the invaders. The enemy army appeared to be in the Northland still, and the Druid wondered just how long that would last.

  He had almost forgotten Tarsha when she suddenly leaned into him once more, her head so close to his they were almost touching. “Tell me why you abandoned the Druids?”

  He felt a brief surge of irritation. “I did not abandon them. They exiled me. You do know the difference, don’t you?”

  “Better than you, perhaps. But you exiled yourself, if I remember correctly. Why did you do that? I know you felt powerless in the face of how you were being ignored as High Druid, but why did you walk away? Why didn’t you stay and fight?”

  “Why did you walk away from your brother and come looking for me?”

  It was an unfair comparison, and he regretted making it almost instantly. He felt the hesitation in her response. “We are speaking of you and not of me. Besides, the situations are not the same. You are an experienced magic user. I am not. I was afraid for my safety. Were you?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He paused. “I apologize for snapping at you. I said we must speak truths to each other, and that is what I must do now. Leaving the Druid order still stings when I stop to think about it. I was High Druid, and I gave that up. I did so for the sake of my sanity and my personal well-being. I left because I was sick and tired of struggling with fools. I left because if I had stayed, something bad would have happened because of it. To them or to me.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes leaving is all that is left to us. For you as for me.” She was trying to be helpful. “I regret leaving, too. I want to return. Do you ever think of doing so?”

  He turned back to face her. “I do.”

  “Will you take me with you when you do?”

  “If I do. We’ll see.”

  “Will you allow me to return to Backing Fell?”

  He nodded slowly. “I think I must, if I want to keep you with me over the long run. The problems with your brother won’t heal by themselves. They will only heal with actions. Your actions. I’ve known that from the first.”

  She sat back again. The air displaced by the airship’s progress rushed past his ears in a dull roar, and within its white noise he found a kind of solitude. He let it enfold him as he watched the mountains ahead, their dark wall a barrier to Paranor and the life he had left behind.

  A life he now knew that he, like Tarsha, might have to return to.

  The airship flew on and the hours drifted away in a measuring of his regrets and hopes.

  —

  Their journey lasted three days, and on the evening of the third they spent the night in a village just west of Varfleet, their inn of choice positioned right on the banks of the Mermidon and not far west from where the Runne split off and ran south toward Rainbow Lake. It was late when they arrived, and when they entered the dining room to eat they found themselves alone save for an old man sitting in one corner and a pair of drummers occupying the table closest to the fire. Drisker was worn from the day’s travel and the assault on his thinking regarding both the disaster brewing to the north and the problem of what to do with the men of Orsis Guild when he found them.

  He was counting heavily on the element of surprise once he determined where the guild made its headquarters. If he were to alert those he hunted too quickly, they would go to ground and stay there until he departed. He must find them before they knew he was hunting, and trap them in a place where they could not escape until he willed it. Only then would they be forced to reveal their employer. About the men themselves he had little interest. They were mercenaries who had accepted a job and failed to do it. They cared nothing for Drisker or Tarsha one way or the other. But the man who had hired them clearly cared, and he was the one Drisker was determined to find.

  Druid and apprentice ate a meal of stew, bread, and springwater with a plate of fresh cheeses on the side. They ate in silence, conscious of the silence of the room and the ears of the other three who shared their space. Now and then they would glance at each other and then at the men around them, but otherwise they continued with their meal. An unspoken agreement was reached that they would say nothing to each other until they were safely alone.

  Eventually the drummers left and then the old man rose and departed, too. The room grew silent save for the crackling of the logs in the fire and the movements of the innkeeper as he cleaned up behind the bar and waited for his last two customers to retire.

  Drisker leaned forward. “A
re you ready for this? For what it might take to find these men?”

  She nodded at once. “I’m not afraid.”

  “I didn’t think you were. But maybe you should be. At least a little. This is dangerous business, Tarsha. These are men who would kill you without a thought if they saw you as a threat. Too much confidence can be your undoing.”

  She cocked her head at him. “You don’t have to worry about me. I can manage. You have to remember, I lived with my brother for years. I always found ways to handle him. I’ll do that here, as well.”

  He nodded slowly, but his mind was troubled. “Maybe you should wait here for me.”

  She made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t waste your time expecting that to happen. Just tell me what you want me to do. Tell me how I can help.”

  He smiled in spite of himself. A strong-minded girl, this one. Not even fully grown and already so certain of herself. She was on her way to being so when she first came to him, but it was not so evident then as it was now. Maybe his lessons on the usage of magic had helped that confidence to mature and grow.

  “All right, let me tell you what I need from you.” He leaned close, wanting to make sure the innkeeper couldn’t hear. “I need a couple of things. I need your eyes—a second pair of eyes—to search out what my own might miss. And I need you to watch my back. These assassins are trained killers, and they will try to catch us off guard once they know who we are and why we have come. We have to be very careful. If we make a mistake, it could be fatal. Can you do that?”

  “I can do it. I’m assuming you will trust my judgment on this? On what needs doing? So I can just do it if there’s no time to talk it over?”

  “If I can’t trust you, then we are both finished.” He leaned back again. “I’ll make you a bargain. If we discover who is behind the attempts on my life, we will take time to see what can be done about your brother.”

  “Those two weeks you promised me earlier?” Her face lit up. “Then you think I am ready?”