When only the black glove warmed, his muscles tensed. This is taking far too long. It’s not—
The stone flared into translucence, transforming his palm into a pool of deep, glossy red. “Bloodstone,” he breathed.
“Let Ulerroth find the flaw in this,” he announced to the gray horse grazing on the opposite bank. The animal’s ears flicked, but it did not raise its head.
Before he could close his fingers, could tuck the stone safely away, spears of scarlet light burst from the bloodstone, slashing red across the solid black of his tunic and sleeves. Without thinking, he stared at it. Into it. And the world shifted, wrenched itself inside out, and went dark...
He saw himself crouched, as always, in a rock-hewn tunnel lit by a distant torch while smoke oozed from crevices around a massive oaken door. Tendrils spiraled upward, feeding a thick yellow haze overhead. He coughed. Sweat dripped from his hair, stinging his eyes. The sound of rushing footsteps brought him swiveling to his feet, shield up, heart pounding. His fingers gripped the hilt of the ancient double-edged Sword of Drakkonwehr, where the large bloodstone embedded in the intersection of hand guard, blade, and hilt glowed softly, a dark, deep red…
In the meadow, in the late afternoon sun and fresh mountain air, the man snapped shut his fist, sealing the stone inside, quenching its fire, stopping the nightmare before it began. Again. If only he’d moved faster to secure the gem.
He inhaled a cleansing breath, clearing lightheaded specks from his vision, before he focused his thoughts on the stone, hot in his gloved palm. “Some fool will pay a pretty price to dangle this between his whore’s breasts.” His fingers tightened at the image, but he forced them to relax. He would trade with Ulerroth, as usual. Nothing else.
I’m beyond such needs. He stared at the trampled moss between his boots. I have to be...by now.
Your dream woman would disagree, said the Voice in his head. Or don’t you remember her in the daylight?
He did, all too vividly. She was not the form of woman that usually filled his dreams when this body—this cloaked and hooded shell—grew hungry, but one particular woman whose face had begun taking form a scant two months ago as soon as he entered the Wehrland. That his mind had conjured a complete stranger disturbed him as much as the vision itself.
All the more reason to leave as soon as possible, said the Voice in his head.
On the bank above, his horse shook its bridle and huffed.
“Steady, Ghost.” Rising from his crouch, he followed the animal’s pricked-ear gaze. At the edge of the upland clearing, a stone’s throw away, a large, yellow-gray shape slipped through mottled shadows. “It’s only that shelion again.”
He dropped the gem into a pouch at his waist. Climbing to the top of the bank, he watched faint movements of foliage as a Wehrland lion traversed part way around the clearing’s edge. When it reached a spot upstream of the man, it paused in a pool of sunlight and stood, black-tipped tail twitching, and rubbed its cheek against a sapling.
The man snorted. “Don’t think you’re fooling me, she-cat. I’ve been watching your every move, too.” Two mornings ago he’d first noticed the huge feline lying on a sun-drenched outcrop overlooking the stream he was panning. It had done nothing then, nothing but watch him collect garnets, gold dust, and jet. He’d seen it in the afternoon, too, a flash of yellow-gray glimpsed between bushes. And at night, the scream and the sudden flare of cat’s eyes—too close—while Ghost plunged at the end of his tether. He’d brought the horse nearer and slept with his knife beside his hand. Today, the animal had followed him here.
Being stalked irritated him. Almost as much as traveling this far into the Wehrland for a handful of gems.
“Go fill your belly elsewhere,” the man said, stooping for a rock to throw.
The big cat dropped into a crouch. Flattening its ears, it stared.
The man froze in mid-reach. His mind told him something else had startled the lion. His senses, reporting over the sudden roar of his blood, told him the animal’s gaze was fixed on something beyond him. Under his hood and face-covering, the back of his neck prickled and he listened.
Bees still hummed in the clover near his boots, but the meadowlarks had ceased their calling. His hand moved stealthily toward the knife at his belt.
At the scrape of gravel, he spun. The Krad was on him in a split second, a dark blur of matted fur. The man had only enough time to dodge the down-swing of the creature’s flint blade, to pivot sideways and thrust his own knife upwards. His knuckles hit ribs, and he jerked the weapon back. The beast-man crashed into the panning dish, flipping it into the stream. A few stones followed the dish down the bank to the water’s edge.
The man whirled, but the mountain meadow behind him was empty of anything more threatening than a quail flushed from a blackberry bush. He spun back to the creature lying in a heap on the stream bank. Its mouth was open and spittle clung to the furred chin. Under heavy brows, deep-set black eyes stared at nothing. The flint knife had broken, but the man still kicked the pieces away from fingers caked with dirt. One scratch, one nick from even a fragment of the poison-smeared blade was enough to kill, and even though the creature looked dead—
The stench hit him full in the face. “Filthy, stinking Krad!” Leaping to the stream, he plunged his gloved hand and knife into it and scrubbed away every trace of the beast-man’s blood. He had been lucky. This was the first Krad he’d encountered since entering the Wehrland, and this one was alone. Grabbing his panning dish and gear, he mounted his horse. Where there was one Krad, there was sure to be a pack.
****
The town of Nolar, east of the Wehrland…
Mirianna dreamed the same dream again, just before morning. Her lover leaned over her, as he always did, with his strong shoulders blocking the light and his face nothing but a glimmer of eyes. Sometimes he touched her lips, but when she woke to the contact, it was her own fingers tracing the shape of her mouth, leaving her hungry and unsatisfied. Remembering the dream while she dressed, Mirianna sighed. Someday she would find the man of her dreams. Someday she would no longer have to endure furtive touches from the leering boys and men of Nolar, but would enjoy the stroke of one special man’s fingers, hands, lips, and—
She jerked open her eyes and pressed her palms to burning cheeks. It wouldn’t do if any of her father’s customers found her daydreaming. Especially if her face looked as red as it felt. They already looked at her sideways even though she’d lived among them her whole life. Just because the tailor had once seen her “brandishing” a sword in her father’s workshop, she’d had to close the shutters whenever a bejeweled blade tempted her to try its balance. The residents of Nolar apparently considered it improper for a gem-cutter’s daughter to find the weapons as fascinating as the precious stones her father set into the hilts.
Mirianna pulled a comb through her hair. What would her good neighbors think if they knew it wasn’t the weapons that drew her but the legends they figured in, the Deeds of Kiros, Koronolan and the Hero Mages, the Sword of Drakkonwehr? The stuff of dreams, they would tell her—just like her “lover”—and not fit to be part of a dutiful daughter’s day.
She finished fastening her hair—which the butcher’s wife insisted was “as thick with curls as a harlot’s”—into what she hoped was a respectable knot and returned her attention to her morning chores. Tomorrow she would see about buying straw to stuff the mattresses afresh. That is, if the butcher liked the Nolar guild ring her father had made for him. And if he paid in something other than trade.
Sighing, she surveyed her father’s worktable. There was but one reason a gem cutter and goldsmith of his skill should live so sparsely. The butcher would by now be saying, “Did I promise you beef, Tolbert? I’m so sorry, but it’s old this time of year. I can let you have pork next week, if you don’t mind waiting.” Just as the weaver had said to him last month, in her presence, “My apprentice, you know, was taken ill, and I’ve had to do the work of two. I promised you a
cloak of dyed wool, but all I have is this short cape. Will that do?”
Mirianna would have held out for what was due, but Tolbert, with his eager smile, had bobbed his head and accepted the cape. “Better to take what you can than to leave with empty hands,” he told her when she remarked it would hardly keep him as warm as the formerly agreed upon cloak.
“Then, at least,” she said, “ask for more than your work is worth. That way, you can bargain and still receive full value.”
Tolbert’s watery blue eyes widened. “Never!” He threw aside his mallet. “I have a reputation to uphold.”
Mirianna had bent to kiss his head between scattered strands of graying hair. He was right, of course. He’d lived fifty-two years on the principle of personal integrity, and she with her meager twenty winters could hardly dispute his experiences. She only wished others in Nolar adhered to the same principle, or that he would occasionally listen to her about insisting on full payment. Perhaps then she could divert some of their income for living expenses before her father spent the coin on some unique gem or another handful of uncut stones.
She busied herself with his worktable, organizing his tools so each would be in its assigned place when he sat down to work. It was a task she performed at least three times a day. If she didn’t, Tolbert would tear the cottage upside down looking for a chisel he’d laid down an hour before, in plain sight, on the opposite side of the table.
“Mirianna! Mirianna!”
It was her father’s voice, breathless and...frantic? She spun to the half-open cottage door and gripped it.
Tolbert burst through the gate, his balding head glistening and as red as his cheeks under the wisps of gray beard clinging to them. He bustled through the door she opened for him, dropped two bundles on his worktable, and grabbed her hands.
“What news I have!” he cried, spinning her around with the energy of a twenty-year-old. “What wonderful news!”
Mirianna clung to his hands as they whirled past crockery, kicked over the broom, and landed with a thud on the bench beside the door. “Papa, Papa, what?”
“Flowers!” He gamboled to the worktable and grabbed one bundle. “Flowers for my lovely daughter’s hair, for her hands, for our table!” Thrusting a bunch of peonies into her lap, he kissed her cheek and tucked one huge pink bloom behind her ear.
The blossom drooped. She caught it beside her cheek. The fragrance, heavy and sweet, welled up around her. She closed her eyes, momentarily drunk with it. “Papa...?” she whispered.
But he was already shaking out the other bundle. “A cloak!” He draped it across her knees with a flourish. “The finest in Nolar and the same color as your hair, lamb.”
Mirianna stared at the cloak, at the fine, tight weave and rich, oak-brown color. She touched it, gingerly, and knew at once it was worth more coin than her father had seen in months. “Papa, where—?”
“I’ll make you a turquoise clasp set in silver.” Tolbert rummaged in the tiny drawers of a set of shelves standing on the wall side of his worktable. “I have the stones already. I’ve been saving them for years because, well…” He glanced at her and his already high color deepened. “Because they remind me of your mother’s eyes, and yours, too, of course.” He turned back to the tabletop. “Ah, here they are.” He pulled on his apron, sat down, and sorted through his tools. “I made two clasps last month. Let’s see, where did I put them?”
Mirianna laid the flowers carefully to one side on the bench. Gathering the cloak in her arms, she plucked a scattering of peony petals from it, and then draped it over the bench back. “Papa,” she said, rising and placing her hands on his shoulders as he worked, “everything—the cloak, the flowers—is lovely, but...how did you get the coin to buy these?”
Tolbert lowered the gem he had been sizing. “Didn’t I tell you?” He looked for a moment befuddled, then laughed. “Why, it’s wonderful, child. The Master of Nolar has commissioned me to make all the jewelry for his betrothal and wedding! His manservant saw me delivering the butcher’s ring and insisted I see Master Brandelmore immediately.”
He unfastened a pouch from his belt and dropped it onto the table. “Look! He’s advanced me coin to buy the gems.”
The pouch had landed with a solid chink, and now it sat bowing out like a distended belly from its knotted neck. Mirianna was certain there was more coin within than her father had seen in his lifetime. Even if the Master’s fortress sat atop the bluff overlooking Nolar valley, and even if Master Brandelmore owned most of the vineyards and all of the forests for several leagues in all directions, this had to be coin he counted dear.
“Papa,” she breathed, “there’s so much.”
“The Master of Nolar wants only the finest.” He pushed the pouch aside. “He’ll pay me the rest when I deliver the finished pieces.”
“There’ll be more?” Mirianna whispered.
Tolbert leaned an elbow on the table and combed fingers through his beard. “I’ll see Burl for the emeralds, amber, and diamonds. He should have amethyst, too, but not the jet and bloodstone.”
“Bloodstone! He’ll give his bride that?”
“Said he wanted her bound to him in blood. The rich...” He waved his hand. “Too much at stake, I suppose.”
Mirianna shivered. If she were Master Brandelmore’s bride, she’d hardly be comforted to receive petrified drops of the legendary Last Dragon’s blood as a sign of the marriage bond.
“I’ll have to go to Ar-Deneth,” Tolbert mused. “Perhaps I should go there to see Ulerroth first, before I see Burl. After all, the size and shape of the bloodstone will determine much about the companion gems.”
“Ar-Deneth!” Mirianna gripped his shoulders again. “But that’s across the Wehrland!”
Tolbert nodded absently. “It’s the only source if you have to have bloodstone.” He straightened and patted her hand without looking at her. “The two men the Master’s giving me as escort will be here in the morning. Be a lamb and pack my things while I finish this.”
She nodded, but the rest of her body stood frozen in place by the shock of his announcement. This must be the fear my mother had for so many years. Now it’s mine, and I don’t know what I should do.
Her father had traveled to Ar-Deneth several times. It was the last, when she was nine, she remembered most vividly, watching her mother’s hollow eyes stare at the western horizon day after day. Tolbert was three months late that time. He’d started out twice and each time been driven back, first by marauding Krad, second by heavy snow. Finally, he’d joined a group of fur traders and forged his way across the mountainous no-man’s land. Adelia thinned dramatically after that and, although she never spoke of it to her daughter, Mirianna was certain the memory of that fear hastened her mother’s death a year later.
Now her father was about to embark on a similar journey, but one he hadn’t taken in eleven years. Mirianna studied her father. His hands moved quickly, confidently from tool to gem to setting. His eye was still sharp, requiring his magnifying glass only for fine detail. But his shoulders had stooped so, she could see over the top of his head when they stood side by side. On the occasions he made the four-day trip to Burl’s, he returned complaining of pains in his knees and back. One ankle swelled in hot weather, and he coughed at night if he forgot to drink the tea the town herbalist specially mixed for him.
“I’ll pack,” she said, “but I’m going with you.”
Tolbert cocked his head as if trying to grasp her words. He laid down the clasp and turned, his forehead grooved into three curving furrows. “You—but that’s the Wehrland.”
She didn’t want him to know she feared for him or he’d refuse her instantly. No, she must choose her words and make him believe her fears lay elsewhere. “You’ll be gone for at least a month. What will I do here alone for that long? And if you’re delayed? We have no relatives here. I’d be a woman alone.”
Tolbert frowned. “Our neighbors will look after you. They’ve done so before.”
&
nbsp; “Yes, but that was for only a few days at a time. This could be months.”
His frown deepened. “I hadn’t thought of that. All the excitement...” He gestured to the bag of coins sitting in the center of the table.
Mirianna could see confusion in his eyes. One more subtle idea, carefully planted, would be enough. She lowered her gaze and smoothed wrinkles from her apron, letting her hands worry the edge of it. “Besides, the miller’s apprentice has been looking at me lately, and—”
“That little weasel?”
She nodded, keeping her gaze averted. “He makes me uncomfortable when he...when he stares like that.” He was no worse than the others, but her father didn’t need to know that.
“That does it!” Tolbert slapped his hand on the table. “Wehrland or not, you’ll just have to come.” He turned back to his work with a dismissive wave. “Don’t just stand there, girl. Hurry up and pack.”
“Yes, Papa.” She turned away quickly, hiding her smile.
Halfway up the ladder to the loft, her excitement waned. She’d convinced her father to take her, but just what was he taking her into? Even small children knew the Wehrland was a place from which not everyone returned. And those that did return, with her own ears she’d heard some swear they’d never enter it again. Well, we’ll be together at least, and I can watch out for him.
****
At his campsite, the man stoked his fire, raising flames. He passed his knife three times through the fire’s heart, making sure every trace of the beast-man burned away and the blade was purified, before laying it on a rock to cool. A branch burst in the ash, shooting a spiral of embers toward a sky streaked with twilight. He straightened and watched them catch the breeze, scatter like fireflies, and, one by one, wink out. An all-too-familiar urge to join them, to explode brilliantly and then...dissipate shook through his body. If only he hadn’t survived that day, hadn’t awakened to the horrible aftermath and the…abomination it had made of him.
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