“You’re awake,” she said. “I was afraid you would sleep through the Council of Three’s arrival.”
Wincing, Bram put a hand gingerly to a throbbing temple. “I-I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m having a hard time recalling how I got here. Into bed, not Bastion,” he added hastily. “I was in the bath, and the last thing I remember was—” He stopped, blushing furiously.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “The bearer found you asleep. He removed you from the bath and put you to bed.”
Dagamier’s words were comforting, but something about the way her eyes regarded him made him wonder if she could read his mind. Or perhaps the bearer had not been alone in putting him to bed. Either possibility made him decidedly uncomfortable. He sat up, tucking the sheets around himself while he searched for his clothing.
“Are these what you’re looking for?” she held out his tunic and trousers, newly washed and neatly folded.
Bram took them with a grateful if pained flash of white teeth. The black-robed wizardess turned her back, the hem of her silken robe brushing his bare feet.
Bram wasted no time jerking the borrowed nightshirt over his head, then replacing it with his own well-worn garments. “We were going to talk last night about the meeting with the Council. How long before they’re scheduled to arrive?”
The young woman turned around, graceful and silent as black smoke. “Any time now. Par-Salian is predictably punctual. Justarius is always a hair late and a touch harried. LaDonna likes to make a grand entrance after them both whenever possible.”
“I have to leave for Qindaras to retrieve Kirah the moment the meeting is concluded,” he said. “Lyim is as helpless as we could ever hope for. His protective palace is destroyed; he has no place to hide; he’s lost his hand, and along with it the gauntlet. Come to think of it, he may even have bled to death. At the very least, he can’t wear a right-handed gauntlet without a right hand. He can’t use Ventyr to absorb magic anymore.”
“I wouldn’t count on any of that,” Dagamier said softly. “There are any number of ways a mage could reattach or regenerate a severed hand in less than a day.”
“Maybe so, but there’s a good chance he doesn’t have the gauntlet anymore,” said Bram. “Guerrand was holding it when he fell, and it flew into the crowd. Why don’t we suggest the Council send an army of mages or even monsters into Qindaras before Lyim can restore his hand or find the gauntlet? If we move quickly—”
“I’m afraid it’s already too late,” Dagamier said grimly.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Your sense of time was thrown off when you were being carried back here by the winged servant,” she explained. “It’s been longer than you think since Lyim lost his hand—nearly a week.”
“That doesn’t prove he’s had time to find the gauntlet, or even to recover his hand,” challenged Bram.
“No,” she agreed. “However, I’ve been experimenting with spells this morning; not one of them has worked.”
Bram stared at her. “So after all we went through to stop him, Lyim’s still in control. Magic is still susceptible.”
“We all feel vulnerable while Lyim has the gauntlet,” Dagamier confessed. “For as long as I can remember, the Art has been my whole life, my only companion. And now I can’t use it, for fear of strengthening someone who intends to destroy the thing that sustains me.” She gave Bram an envious look. “At least you can still cast your kind of magic. I wonder if our two disciplines are very different,” she mused.
“Watching Guerrand for so long, I’ve noticed more similarities than differences between his kind of magic and mine. My uncle and I even discussed the subject on cold winter days before the fire. He’d promised to mentor me in wizard magic to broaden my abilities, but we never got around to it. We thought we had plenty of time.…”
“I wish I possessed your magical skills now,” said Dagamier fiercely. “Then, at least, I’d be more useful.”
“Perhaps, when Lyim is safely disposed of,” Bram ventured, “we could share knowledge of our disciplines.” He suggested it, as much to persuade them both that there would be a day when this nightmare was over.
Dagamier smiled. “I will look forward to that.” But her spine visibly stiffened with the next thought. “Until then, we must deal with the Council of Three.”
“So now we are something to be dealt with?” said a voice from the doorway, making both of them jump. The speaker’s voice was good-natured.
Bram saw the white-haired Head of the Conclave first over Dagamier’s shoulder. Par-Salian shuffled into the smallish chamber without knocking.
Dagamier whirled around. “Of course not, Par-Salian,” she said a bit breathlessly, though without apology. “Are LaDonna and Justarius waiting in the hallway?”
“No, they have been delayed by some disturbing news we received from our spies still in Qindaras. I came ahead to report them to you.”
Bram looked flustered. “I can explain—”
“We already know of Guerrand’s death,” Par-Salian interrupted, “and your unwilling flight from that city. We were greatly saddened by his loss, of course, but Guerrand died as he wished—defending the Art. Now we must prepare for the repercussions of that defeat.”
“What have your spies reported?” Dagamier asked anxiously. “It’s as I feared, isn’t it? Lyim’s got the gauntlet and his hand back.”
Par-Salian’s face looked more careworn than usual. “Worse still, I’m afraid. Lyim has assembled an army of extremely powerful magical creatures. He’s leading them toward Wayreth even as we speak. If he gets inside the Tower of High Sorcery wearing that gauntlet—”
There was no need to finish the thought.
“We had anticipated the possibility of an assault on a tower, of course, but we had hoped to eliminate Lyim before that became a real threat. I’m afraid that, without the retrieval of the gauntlet, the destruction of his protective palace merely hastened the inevitable.
“We’ll just have to stop him before he gets to Wayreth then,” Bram said with a conviction he didn’t entirely feel.
“Exactly,” said Par-Salian. “Now all we have to do is figure out how.”
Neither Bram nor Dagamier were reassured to see that even the most powerful mage on Krynn looked frightened.
* * * * *
Bram stepped from the faerie road and into the seclusion of his topiary garden at Castle DiThon. The lord of Thonvil shivered in his thin tunic. Night and day had begun to blur during the seemingly endless meetings with the Council of Three in the isolation of Bastion. Days and weeks were muddled in his mind by the speed of travel on the faerie road, not to mention his unexpected flight from Qindaras. He had completely lost track of time, of place, and didn’t recall that it would now be the dead of winter in Thonvil. By Bram’s closest reckoning, less than a fortnight had passed since he’d left with Guerrand for the distant city on the Plains of Dust. So much had happened. So much of it tragic beyond anything he had considered when last he’d stood here.
The Council had been reluctant to let him leave, even briefly, at such a time, until Bram explained, “Circumstances have left my holdings in the hands of a gnome.” They waved him off after exacting a promise to return within the cycle of one day.
Strangely, Bram hoped to see regret in the eyes of the black-robed wizardess when he announced his temporary leave. Instead, he’d found support, and that was almost as good. She seemed very different than he remembered her from his unexpected trip to the first Bastion. Smarter, softer … Considering the changes he’d undergone since their first meeting, Bram had to ask himself if she was so different, or if he just saw things differently now. He supposed a little of both was closer to the truth.
In little more than a week Bram had come to rely on Dagamier’s practical counsel. In an odd way, she seemed to fill a tiny corner of the void his uncle had left.
Secretly, Bram had feared returning to Thonvil, a place fraught with images of his uncle. At Bastion, he’d occ
asionally been able to forget, or at least pretend for just a moment, that Guerrand was not gone. Bram mumbled aloud his goals like a mantra, so he would not be distracted by memories of times that would never be again. “Get in quietly. Summon Maladorigar. Turn things over to Hingham as regent. Then get bade to Bastion.”
Determined to see, and be seen, by no one who would ask about Guerrand and Kirah, Bram invoked one of the first tuatha skills his mother had taught him. He seldom used it, since it required of him a level of concentration that made other spellcasting impossible.
The tuatha never referred to the skill as invisibility. For them, visibility while among humans was a rare occurrence, invisibility the norm. He thought of it as shrouding himself. During his first weeks with Primula, she had struggled to reach through the mire of “Bram’s overdeveloped, stubborn human side” to speak to his latent tuatha skills. She’d promised he would one day perform the skill without thought; he would just “be” tuatha. Bram had scoffed, then. It wasn’t that he had intentionally resisted her, but as if Primula spoke another language, one that didn’t even use the same symbols.
The analogy proved almost too apt. The innate tuatha magic did not require prayer or study, used no physical symbols at all. It sprang from mental images conjured from nature. Once Bram had truly grasped that, his studies progressed rapidly, though the bulk of his two-year absence had been spent learning to control and maintain focus, which were essential to tuatha magic.
There were many images from nature Bram could have used to shroud himself, but he concentrated on thoughts of the wind, of being one with the slight breeze that ruffled the hair at the nape of his neck. Today he had need of speed as well as concealment. He shook his arms, rattled the tense muscles of his broad shoulders and neck until he felt himself lighten. It was a feeling similar to the weightlessness of levitation, and yet dissimilar; it was an indescribable feeling, one of … transparency.
When he was certain he was as invisible as the wind, Bram slipped into the castle. His steps slowed when he crossed into the foretower and noticed sentries wearing livery he hadn’t seen since he’d become Lord DiThon. The tall, circular entry hall and the stairway were alive with servants and soldiers. Stubbornly maintaining his focus, Bram hastened up the curving stairway, slipping through the hustle and press of bodies. His curiosity quickly turned to concern. Had some disaster struck while he was gone? Was someone ill? Bram took the stairs two at a time as he raced for his study, where he could gather his thoughts and contact Maladorigar.
Bram burst through the door, literally, since he didn’t need to open it in his airy state. What he saw inside made him instantly lose his focus. The feeling of opacity flooded back into his body like an adrenalin rush.
Emperor Mercadior Redic V sat at the dusty desk Bram had shared with his ancestors, indulging in a glass of ruby port. One of the robust emperor’s bejeweled hands was wrapped around the delicate stem of the snifter glass; the other was riffling the drawers of Bram’s desk.
Mercadior looked up just as Bram’s focus dissolved and his form materialized.
“What’s going on?” Bram demanded, bowing to his emperor only as an afterthought.
“What, indeed?” The emperor arched an ironic brow at the young lord. “Strange that my guards didn’t announce your arrival, DiThon.”
Bram ducked the pointed observation. “What has brought the emperor of Northern Ergoth back to Castle DiThon?” he asked as pleasantly as concern would allow.
“The mysterious disappearance of all the DiThons,” Mercadior responded cagily. “Your gnome, that fast-talking little fellow whose name I can never remember, sent me a reluctant missive, seeking direction in your absence.”
“Maladorigar contacted you?” Bram asked, surprised at the gnome’s temerity.
“He feared the whole lot of you DiThons had been kidnapped … or worse.”
“A little of both, I’m afraid,” Bram said ruefully.
Mercadior regarded Bram’s serious, haggard face. “Your uncle?”
Bram’s words caught as he revealed as much as he could about Guerrand’s accidental death and Kirah’s abduction without revealing Council secrets.
Mercadior’s chest rose and fell in a silent sigh, though he did not look surprised. “That begins to explain a great deal that I suspected, but Astinus would not reveal to me.”
Everyone had heard of the mysterious and mercurial sage of Palanthas. Astinus recorded everything said or done as it occurred on Krynn. “You went to Astinus to find out what happened to us?”
“No,” Mercadior said with a tinge of impatience, “I knew nothing of your disappearance before I left to ask Astinus what he knew about the difficulties my mages had been experiencing. Thalmus had questioned the Council of Three about the occurrences, but they were characteristically close-lipped about the matter.”
Bram squirmed uneasily. “What did Astinus tell you, exactly?”
“Only that the source of the magical flux was an artifact in the Plains of Dust. He said the Council of Three had sent assassins after the renegade who was controlling the artifact.”
Bram was careful to not respond, aware that Mercadior was watching him closely.
“I began to piece events together,” the emperor continued, “only after I returned to Gwynned and received your gnome’s frantic missive.” Bram could feel the press of Mercadior’s intelligent gaze. “You and your uncle were the assassins sent by the Council of Three, weren’t you?”
Whatever the consequences with the Council, Bram knew he could not lie outright to his emperor. “Yes,” he admitted in a tremulous whisper.
“I knew it, yet I could not understand why. I was not aware you and your uncle were assassins.”
“That is likely part of the reason we failed,” he confessed. “The Council asked Guerrand because he was once a friend of the ex-mage who controls the artifact.”
Mercadior nodded slowly. “That explains Guerrand’s part, but what about you? Why would they send a farmer to confront an evil maniac with an artifact?”
“Because I have magical skills that are impervious to the artifact’s power,” Bram blurted. “I learned this just after my father’s death, after your first visit here.”
The emperor sipped from his glass of port and considered Bram thoughtfully. “What does the Council plan to do next to stop this threat?”
“They’ve learned through spies and surveillance that the renegade is leading a vast army of citizens across the plains. They believe he is headed for the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, where his ability to drain magic would be almost unstoppable. The Council is preparing to mount an ambush far from Wayreth, outside the dwarven stronghold of Thorbardin, which lies directly in Lyim’s path to the tower. The hill dwarves who occupy the lands outside the city have agreed to join the fight. The noble Hylar dwarves, who reside in Thorbardin, have also signed on, with the promise of the return of the dangerous artifact that their ancestors created, then foolishly traded away. Par-Salian has even enlisted the aid of the Qualinesti elves, whose forests surround the tower at Wayreth. I’ve agreed to use my magic in the ambush.”
“Then sign me up, and two hundred of my best cavaliers!” Mercadior announced boldly, as if the battle were but a draught game. He saw Bram’s eyes open in helpless amazement. “I have as much an interest as anyone in seeing magic thrive, DiThon,” Mercadior explained reasonably. “More, perhaps.
“Besides,” the emperor added without shame, “fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the Qualinesti won’t hurt me in my quest for a treaty with Solostaran, the Speaker of the Suns. Just think, DiThon, we may accomplish in one battle what I’ve struggled for years to gain through diplomacy! Once that treaty is signed, there’ll be no question that Northern Ergoth has again outflanked Southern Ergoth both militarily and economically.” The emperor seemed more than pleased at the prospect of achieving his long-held goal. “Make that three hundred cavaliers!”
Bram was overwhelmed by this unexpected tur
n of events. “I’ll have to speak with the Council, of course, but I’m sure they’ll welcome the aid.” The appearance of three hundred armed knights would be quite a coup.
“You’d better move fast, then,” said Mercadior, his thoughts speeding forward. “It’ll take the better part of a fortnight to get such a vast contingent to Thorbardin, even if I commandeer every one of Anton Berwick’s ships for the cause. Still, I think it can be done.”
Bram stood. “I just have to speak with Maladorigar and assign a regent in my absence.”
“Never mind that,” Mercadior said, leading Bram to the door. “I’ll leave one or two of my top lieutenants here to help the gnome run things. Just get yourself back to wherever you were and clear it with these mages. I’ll be gathering my forces and waiting for your missive. We may not be able to use magic against this Lyim, but a few good cavaliers from Northern Ergoth can still stave his skull in with maces!”
Bram dug his heels in, despite the pressure of Mercadior’s optimistic hands. “I should warn you, Sire, that this battle will likely be the bloodiest you’ve ever seen. In addition to his army, Lyim also has some incredible creatures under his control, which he seems to use as bodyguards. Refugees have described them only as vicious and terrifying. We believe they’re extraplanar … and almost indestructible.”
But Mercadior wasn’t cowed. He shook his fist skyward. “We’ll see how indestructible they are against a Northern Ergothian sword!”
* * * * *
“Watch your step here, my lord.”
Lyim ignored the soldier’s warning. He could see for himself that the ground was tangled with corpses. “They tried to defend this?” he asked with contempt, sweeping his hand over the low stone wall that lined the street.
Isk, wearing a spattered suit of mail, kicked aside a broken spear. “I don’t believe they ever hoped or intended to stop us. These men just wanted to slow us down, to give the others time to retreat into the manor house.”
Lyim scanned the bodies more carefully, squinting to see through the drifting smoke. He noticed the telltale signs of a suicide stand: clusters of bodies where small groups of defenders, standing back-to-back, had fought until overwhelmed; defenders and attackers fallen into the same heap, sometimes with their arms still locked about each other.
The Seventh Sentinel Page 25
