“Get yourself out of the way and I’ll clear the entrance!” The man in brown robes shouted upwards, rolling his sleeves up in a purposeful fashion. The girl nodded and scrambled with some alacrity to a ledge above the opening.
Temar watched, open-mouthed, as the man laid a hand on the boulders at his feet and an unearthly golden glow swept up through the scree, bright beneath the dull gray of the weathered and stained stones. With a whisper at first, building to a full throated growl, the very rocks themselves flowed like water, swept sideways like wind-tossed waves, sliding downwards to leave the black hollow that led to the cavern open to the sunlight. A final ripple clattered back down through the scree, running its length to toss a few stones gently at Temar’s feet as the amber light faded and vanished.
He stared at the man. “What are you?”
“My name is Usara.” The man smiled and bowed abruptly from the waist. “I am a wizard.”
Temar shook his head in mystification.
“I work magic, but not as the Lady Guinalle does it. My colleague Shiv and I follow a different path.”
“Come on.” Livak, the redhead, was glaring at Temar again with that unwarranted dislike. “Let’s get this done!”
The broken and treacherous rocks were now transformed into a firm pathway and Temar found himself hurrying ever faster to reach the entrance to the cavern. He paused on the threshold, squinting into the darkness, any old fear of such places irrelevant in the face of his urgency to find Guinalle. A glow at his shoulder made him turn to reach for a torch, but he took an involuntary step backward when he saw a pale yellow flame burning insouciantly in the center of the magic-wielder’s palm.
“Don’t worry about it.” The other one, Shiv, raised his own hand to create a greenish light, seemingly reflected from the very rocks. “Just help us find Guinalle.”
Temar needed no further urging to move away from these strange people with their peculiar talents. He hurried down the rough-hewn steps, the arcane light pursuing him as the others followed. At the foot of the uneven stair, he paused and looked around the huge expanse of the cave, heart pounding in his chest but strength and courage returning to him with every pulse of his blood.
The cavern had been much enlarged by the miners, Temar recalled, hewn out of the living rock, angles and facets marking the stroke of axe and pick on the walls. The roof was jagged and uneven, dipping and rising in a series of frozen waves. The silent air was motionless, not over-cold but the absolute stillness made him shiver nonetheless. He forced himself to take another step as his unwanted companions crowded at his back. As they moved out into the cave as one, their footsteps rang harshly in the hushed calm.
Unnerved, the younger lad stood close to Temar and glanced around for guidance while the guardsmen exchanged wondering glances, looking back up to the circle of leafy daylight at the head of the stair. The two men, with their unnatural light growing to reach the furthest reaches of the cavern moved out to either side. No one entered the body of the cave, Temar noted with surprise, leaving that to the girl, Livak. She took a careful step forward, then another, a thief’s tread silent on the sandy floor as she picked her way through pallets and mattresses, rough beds of cloaks and blankets packed close together, a pale light of enchantment hovering over her head to show her a motionless figure in every space—men and women, unformed youths, bearded artisans, staid matrons, fresh faced maidens, children curled in unconscious memory of that first, short, dream-filled sleep within their mother’s belly. Temar watched as the green-eyed girl moved slowly between the motionless figures, his scalp prickling with apprehension.
Most looked peaceful, as if they merely slept, but others wore frowns, faces twisted with fear and sorrow, a crystal tear glinted in the corner of an eye, a mouth half open on a final protest. Some wore bandages, old blood staining the linen black and brown. These people were not asleep however. The warm flush of natural rest was nowhere to be seen. It was replaced on all sides by a cold pallor, an unnatural stiffness. Livak put a tentative hand to a young man’s cheek and shuddered.
“It’s like touching a marble statue,” she said softly, an echo carrying her words whispering around the cave, spiraling up into the darkness of the roof.
“Where will Guinalle be?” Parrail plucked hesitantly at Temar’s sleeve, eyes huge and black in the dim light.
Temar frowned. “I’m not sure. She would have been the last, so she could seal the cave, along with the Artifice, so…” His words trailed off as he looked around, gaze drawn to a low pallet set a little aside from the serried ranks stretching out into the cavern. He hurried toward it, the boy at his side, desperate hope taunting him, tears starting at a sudden pain behind his eyes.
“She’s beautiful,” the lad breathed and Temar could not find any words to answer him as he looked down on Guinalle’s motionless form. Clad in simple cream linen under an undyed woollen gown, her rich chestnut hair provided a single note of color, frozen in soft wisps against a face as remote and colorless as the more distant moon. A crystal vial with a silver lid shone between her breasts and a tightly furled parchment rested beneath her clasped hands. Temar stroked her hair, which was stiff and unresponsive under his fingers where it had once flowed, sensuous as silk.
“If this is her, get on with it,” Livak startled both of them as she appeared on silent feet to lean down and pull the document from Guinalle’s helpless hands. “Come on, Parrail, this is where you’re supposed to make yourself useful.” She spared Temar a glance, venomous with that peculiar dislike, and he felt a sudden shock of pain through his temples again.
The boy, Parrail, leafed through his book hastily, lips moving silently as he ran a finger over something. “Right,” he sniffed, and ran a trembling hand over his mouth. “I think I can do it.” He took the crystal vial and wrapped Guinalle’s white fingers tightly around it. Unrolling the parchment, he squinted uncertainly at the flowing script before clearing his throat and starting to read.
“Ais margan arsteli sestrinet…”
His faltering words echoed around the great cave and a terrible weakness overwhelmed Temar, dropping him helpless to hands and knees. Face close to Guinalle’s he saw her white pallor sicken and gray and, for one terrible moment, he saw the skull lying in wait, shining beneath her flawless skin. Something in the depths of Temar’s mind was screaming in anguish and rage, that lone, tormented voice drowned in the next instant by howls of disembodied anguish battering him from all sides. A foul charnel air choked him and he struggled for breath.
“No,” he gasped, “no, stop, you’re killing us!”
“Have you no sense of rhythm in you? Trimon curse you for a tone-deaf fool!” Livak snatched the parchment from Parrail as she cursed him.
“Ais marghan, ar stelhi, sess thrinet torre…” Her musical voice rang high and clear in the emptiness as she chanted the cadence of an ancient tongue and Temar blinked the desperate tears from his eyes to become aware of another sound. Slight and hesitant at first, the sigh of breath rose from Guinalle’s sleeping form and he saw the first kiss of life soften her lips to a living rose. A blush warmed her pale cheeks and the unnatural stiffness left her body and clothes, the folds of her gown relaxing in a soft fall around her slim frame and wisps of her long hair moving slightly as her breath caught them.
She shivered suddenly and opened her eyes, wondering and curious as she saw the faces above her. No one spoke. Guinalle frowned slightly, puzzled. She reached out and touched Temar’s face as he knelt there, heart too full of emotion to speak.
“Are you real? I dreamed of you, in a distant land, far from family and friends. Is this another dream?”
Temar clasped her delicate hand in his to warm it between his palms. “This is no dream. You are awake now, Guinalle. Vahil sent help to rescue us all!”
Guinalle sat up abruptly, her eyes confused. As she did so, the crystal vial rolled down her skirts to shatter on the stone floor. The strong scent of perfume made her gasp, “I remember, I reme
mber! The sleep, the cave—” She looked round, eyes wide and face distressed, snatching her hand away.
“Guinalle.” Temar’s voice was choked with tears and he reached for her. The look of consternation she gave him cut him like a knife.
“Who are you?” she asked, suddenly wary, drawing away unconsciously. “What do you want with me?”
“It’s me, Temar.” He did not understand this, why did she not recognize him?
“D’Alsennin has somehow been revived within the body of one of our companions,” Livak spoke to Guinalle, forcing herself to speak slowly and clearly, sparing Temar only a fleeting look of naked hatred. “That sword has something to do with it, I don’t fully understand how. You must send Temar back to himself and pray to Arimelin that our friend survives unharmed!”
Guinalle was rubbing her eyes, as if she sought to wipe away the lingering effects of her long enchantment. Raising her head, she studied Temar closely, frowning.
“Yes, I see it now—the eyes, the gestures, all that I know, but the face, the body, no wonder I did not recognize you, Temar.”
“What are you saying?” Now it was his turn to retreat in instinctive defense. “I know I am somewhat changed, but the enchantment—”
“Look at me.” Guinalle studied his eyes and he saw wonder in her face. “Look at your hands,” she said, “feel your hair.” She reached to run her fingers through the tight curls.
“What are you doing?” Temar snapped, “don’t you know me?”
“I know you, Temar D’Alsennin, none better, but not in this guise,” Guinalle said with a touch of her old manner. “You must let this man return, and go back to your sleep until we can revive you properly. You have fought the Artifice and twisted it, broken through it to invade an innocent man’s mind and steal his body! That was never intended.”
Temar could not meet her gaze. He looked back down at his hands to see those tanned and scratched artisan’s fingers instead of the thin aristocratic hands of a nobleman, the sapphire seal ring of his house missing. Fear clutched at him, his own cowardice appalling him.
“I can’t, I can’t go through that again,” he whispered, remembering the sickening, smothering sensation, the feeling of drowning, of choking, the soft claws of enchantment stealing his mind away. “I can’t do it, don’t ask it of me!”
“So will you stay as a thief in this man’s body?” Guinalle’s hazel eyes were hard in the unearthly green light, her tone uncompromising. “Where will you go? There will be no place on either side of the ocean for the abomination you will have become!”
Temar gasped under the lash of her words and tears started to his eyes. “How can you say that?”
Guinalle rose cautiously to her feet and held out her hand. “Come with me, whoever you are.”
She picked her way unsteadily through the rows of silent sleepers, the strangers who had accompanied Temar to this place following at a distance, the red-haired woman fumbling in a belt-pouch, face dangerous as she rested her other hand on a dagger at her belt. Guinalle came to a lone figure by a hollow, laid out on its back, hands meeting on its chest, fingers circled around empty air. Temar looked down at himself, at his lean, angular face, bloodless lips, thin black brows startling against the pallor of his skin, harsh lines above closed, blind eyes.
“We brought you down here after we wrought the Artifice,” murmured Guinalle, eyes distant. “Vahil took your sword, he and Den Fellaemion bade me farewell, and then I laid myself down to sleep with you all.” She gazed around the cavern and sighed. “I felt so alone, so very alone.”
“I’m here now,” Temar blinked away angry tears.
“No, you’re not, you’re no more than an evil dream tormenting this man. You cannot live in his body without both of you going mad.” Guinalle shook her head with absolute conviction. “Temar, listen to me, trust me. You must go back under the bonds of the Artifice until I can return you to yourself.”
“I won’t! I can’t!” shouted Temar. “How can you ask that of me?” He seized her, rage filling him, struggling with a furious impulse to shake some understanding into her.
“For the sake of the love we once shared,” replied Guinalle softly as the echoes of his outburst died away. “This isn’t you, Temar, is it?”
Temar stared at her aghast and then at the strange hands he was using to clutch Guinalle’s shoulders, his own familiar hands empty and still beside them. A sudden howling fury rang silently through his head, an enraged demand for release hammering against the inside of his skull, sending his senses reeling, blinded, deafened. The moment passed but he staggered under its impact.
“I can’t face the darkness again,” he pleaded, unable to help himself.
“Trust me.” Guinalle laid her cool hands on his temples and the pain coursing through his head eased a little.
“Place the sword back in your own hands,” she said calmly. “It’s going to be all right, my dearest.” Her eyes left Temar’s for an instant, to convey her reassurances to the silent knot of strangers watching, still, intent.
Temar unbuckled the sword with clumsy fingers, sliding it into the unfeeling hands of the body that had once been his. Weakness overcame him again and he knelt, all strength in his legs deserting him as Guinalle began a low-voiced incantation, her own voice roughened with tears.
The scream of terror and desolation that ripped from his throat set Temar’s blood racing in his veins, but as he tried blindly to climb to his feet he pitched forward—and knew no more.
Kel Ar’Ayen,
43rd of Aft-Summer
I came to myself lying across a body that was as cold and immobile as stone. Pushing myself backward in horror, I found I was as weak as a half-drowned kitten and able to make about as much sense as I struggled to speak. I gasped and hugged my arms to myself, nausea surging up within me, threatening to choke me. A flush like sudden fever left me sweating and dizzy, head ringing like a new-struck bell. I swallowed on a throat ripped raw by the screams of another man’s anguish.
“Hush, let me,” Livak was at my side, dragging me away, to prop me sitting against the rough wall of the cave. She knelt before me and gripped my shoulders with both hands, staring deep into my eyes. “Ryshad?”
I nodded and she held me tight, burying her face in my neck where I felt her hot tears of relief. I wrapped my own arms around her, feebly at first then with growing strength. The urge to vomit passed and I felt the sweat cooling on my body in the dimness of the cavern.
“Are you all right?” I recognized Guinalle at once, but where I had always heard her voice clear and comprehensible in my dreams now I found it hard to understand her slow and lilting words.
“I am, thank you.” I nodded as best I could with Livak’s red hair half smothering me.
“Do you remember…” Guinalle began hesitantly.
I raised a hand to silence her. “Yes,” I replied curtly. “No matter, I don’t want to speak of it.”
She managed a half-smile of guilty relief and turned to Temar. Disentangling myself from Livak’s embrace, I managed to get to my feet and looked down on the physical body of the man I’d spent so long struggling against inside my head. Livak came to join me, wrapping an arm around my waist as she tucked herself under my arm. Temar looked very young and I realized with an overwhelming relief that I was free of his uncertainties, his ill-governed emotions, all the ills of youth that I had thought I had left behind long since. Not that this whole foul experience hadn’t left me with a few quandaries of my own, but I would address them in my own time, I decided. For the present, it was enough to know I was sole master of my own head once more.
Guinalle laid a fond hand on Temar’s waxen forehead and I shivered as unseen fingers touched my own skin in a shadowy echo.
“Are you all right?” Livak moved to look at me, face concerned, and as she did so her foot knocked against a dagger on the floor. I recognized it as hers and reached down to pick it up.
“Careful with that,” Livak took it fr
om me hastily and plunged the blade repeatedly into a patch of damp earth until the blade gleamed, cleaned of the oily salve it had carried.
“What were you planning to do with that?” I stared at her, startled.
“His lordship over there was none too keen on giving up your warm body to return to that cold one yonder.” Livak glowered at Temar’s unconscious form. “I was just about ready to make his decision for him, when he yielded. Let him argue the fall of the runes with a dose of tahn in his blood.”
I hugged Livak to me. “Thanks for the thought, but don’t blame the lad too much.” I closed my eyes on a brief memory of that appalling sensation of being locked away in endless darkness, cut off from all sensation. “After a taste of what he’s been going through, I can’t say I would have done any different.” Seeing the world through Temar’s eyes had been a salutory reminder of the power of the emotions of youth, the mixture of fear and impetuousness that had driven me in my turn first to the excesses of thassin and then to service with Messire.
Livak snorted and muttered something under her breath as Shiv and the others approached cautiously, the mercenaries in particular looking extremely unsettled. “What do we do now?” Tavie demanded truculently, folding muscular arms over his rounded gut, a scowl lifting his lip to show teeth like a row of burned-out houses. “We came to find this cave and now we’ve done it. What next?”
I looked at Shiv and Usara who turned to Parrail. “Well, I have as many of the small items as we thought promising with me,” he offered. “Shall we see who we can revive?” He looked questioningly at Guinalle, whose head had turned at his words.
“Let me see,” she held out her hands and Parrail gave her the casket with alacrity, kneeling beside her to open it. As Guinalle examined the rings and trinkets with tentative hands, she looked up at us, eyes wide. “How long have we slept?”
I exchanged an uncertain glance with Shiv and Usara. but Parrail spoke up eagerly. “Close on twenty-four generations, as far as we can tell.”
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