The Spellstone of Shaltus

by Linda E. Bushyager

  He led Leah into Barbara’s sitting room and made her lie down on the couch. Then with a sigh he collapsed into one of the overstuffed armchairs.

  Leah’s head swam with questions, but when she closed her eyes she couldn’t summon enough energy to open them again or even to form her chaotic thoughts into any order. Images spun across the backs of her eyelids in a kaleidoscope of color that seemed to draw her farther and farther into its center …

  Then the sound of soft voices intruded into incoherent dreams. Leah yawned and opened her eyes. Rusty had returned with his friend Tim Fletcher. Groggily she realized that she had fallen asleep.

  Michael Rowen had also dozed off. He sprawled in his chair like an oversized stuffed toy bear, his long arms drooping over the sides and his legs propped up on a hassock.

  The other two men sat across the room talking quietly. Evidently they’d decided to let Rowen and Leah rest.

  “Why is this Shaltuswraith after the S’Carlton family anyway?” Rusty was saying. Yawning again, Leah closed her eyes and sleepily listened to them.

  Fletcher frowned. “Well, it all goes back to its origins, I suppose. You know how a wraith is formed?”

  Rusty poured himself another glass of brandy. “A little …”

  “When a sorcerer dies sometimes he can transfer his, well, soul, if you want to call it that, into his spellstone.”

  “His memories?” asked the other.

  “Some, but not all, I suspect. Mostly it’s his will, his spirit.” Fletcher helped himself to a sandwich from the cartload of food that Rusty had brought. “Of course such a transfer requires time and preparation, so it can’t be done if a sorcerer dies suddenly. In Shaltus’s case,.he had the time, will, and reason. From what I know, it happened during the last days of the Great War between the Eastern Kingdoms and S’Shegan. Shaltus was one of S’Shegan’s lieutenants. He was directing the invasion of Carlton and Westvirn.

  During the fighting he captured Castle Bluefield and Richard S’Carlton’s wife. Shaltus raped and then killed her.”

  Rusty’s head jerked up from his glass. “This Richard?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “No—Richard, senior—the present Lord’s father. Anyway, S’Carlton, senior, later managed to retake his castle and capture Shaltus. In retaliation for what Shaltus had done to his wife S’Carlton tortured Shaltus and then hung him from the castle wall in a body-fitting cage as a public spectacle until the clothes and flesh rotted from his bones—a slow, hideous death.

  Leah’s eyes blinked open. Although she had heard the story often, its repetition still evoked gruesome images.

  “But Shaltus was a sorcerer,” said Rusty. “How could he remain caged, waiting to die?”

  Sitting up, Leah answered the question before Fletcher could speak. “It was a cage of silver mesh, impervious to sorcery.”

  “Oh, we didn’t mean to wake you, miss,” said Rusty, rising slowly to his feet. His fat cheeks had a rosy flush from the alcohol. “As long as you’re awake though, you’d better have something to eat and drink.”

  While the ruddy-faced man poured Leah a glass of brandy, Fletcher brought her a plate of sandwiches and cold chicken.

  “We haven’t been introduced—I’m a friend of Lord Rowen’s, one Timothy Fletcher—scribbler, scholar, swordsman, and your humble servant, Miss Carlton.” With that introduction he bowed his head formally, took her hand, kissed it lightly, and handed her the plate of food.

  “Thank you.” She wondered if he was being facetious. She wasn’t used to such courtesy. Noticing the plate he’d given her, she realized that she felt ravenously hungry. She grabbed a sandwich and began to wolf it down.

  “Was I asleep long?” she asked between bites.

  Rusty handed her a glass of brandy. “Not long, maybe an hour, an hour and a half—it took me some time to extricate this food from the confusion in the dining room.”

  Sipping the liquor gratefully, Leah realized that the source of her hunger was the expenditure of so much energy during the sorcery. She would have to be careful. Sorcery was fatiguing at best. Prolonged overuse of psychic powers could result in their loss, even in death. If Shaltus were to attack again, before she could replace the energy, she would be in trouble.

  As she thought about it, her fingers stroked her spellstone absentmindedly. She made a swift probe of the castle. The Shaltus-presence remained weak.

  “Now, Tim,” said Rusty, refilling his glass, “I know silver blocks sorcery and unamplified psychic talents like telepathy and precognition, which don’t require spellstones, but if Shaltus died in a silver cage, how did he become a wraith? They’re bound by silver as well, aren’t they?”

  Fletcher nodded. “As I understand it, Shaltus was wearing a large spellstone when he was imprisoned.

  Realizing that he was dying and unable to escape, he followed the necessary procedures to imprint the stone with his personality. When he died he became a wraith.

  “I doubt Lord S’Carlton even knew about wraiths then—I’ve heard that the technique for making them was discovered by S’Shegan and passed on to some of his sorcerers. That’s why the Great War produced so few wraiths, and those were only from S’Shegan’s side. I know of none formed before the war. Still, S’Carlton was a careful man, and he knew enough not to bury Shaltus’s remains without protection. So the whole cage—powerstone, bones, and all—was taken from the castle and buried some distance away. “Unfortunately S’Carlton hadn’t reckoned with grave robbers. The silver cage was valuable, and powerstones are rare, very rare, so even one tainted by a man as evil as Shaltus was still worth a great deal. However, the thieves found a deadly treasure. When they opened the cage to get the stone they freed the wraith and became its first victims.

  “Somehow during his agonized death Shaltus imprinted his desire for revenge on his spellstone. His wraith is not going to be satisfied until it destroys the entire S’Carlton family.”

  As he finished the story Fletcher sank back down on one of the chairs in the corner of the room arid propped up his feet on a low table.

  Rusty smiled sardonically. “Well, the wraith may be especially keen on killing off the S’Carltons, but I don’t think it would mind it a bit if it managed to destroy the rest of us as well.”

  His pale blue eyes took on a faraway look that became an intense stare into space, as though he’d gone into a trance. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His shoulders slumped forward. His brow furled, his teeth clenched, and his lips twisted into a grimace.

  Suddenly his eyes refocused on reality, and the pained expression slipped from his face. He grabbed his glass violently, took a long swallow that drained it, and refilled it.

  “Not enough to drink,” he muttered. He took another gulp. His face had turned a shade redder. He swayed slightly. Leah wondered if he were going to pass out.

  Then he glanced at her. “You’d better get some real sleep, miss. The next attack won’t be for hours yet—not till well after dawn.” His words had become slurred.

  “How do you … you’re a precog!” exclaimed Leah, as the bits and pieces came together.

  She had never met one before, but she’d heard stories about precogs. There were several precognitive

  N’Omb oracles. She’d also heard of clairvoyants who lived so much in the future that they went insane. She wondered what it would be like to foresee the future—and she began to speculate on the reasons for Rusty’s drinking.

  There was pain in the man’s too-wise eyes. “Aye.” “What’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t rightly know.” He raised his glass in a toastlike gesture, and his hand shook. “My friend here blocks most of it. Michael’s going to search for the hidden stone, and he’ll find it all right …” His words blurred together more, and Fletcher rose to put a steadying hand on the man’s arm. “But that’s when the thing will attack.”

  “And then?” asked Fletcher. He took the glass from the other’s shaking fingers.

  “Don�
��t know… .” Rusty blinked once, closed his eyes, and suddenly collapsed like a rag doll.

  Tim Fletcher seemed to have been expecting it and caught him firmly with his right hand, hardly spilling the drink in his left. He gently lowered his friend into one of the chairs.

  “What now?” asked Leah. She put down her empty plate of food.

  “To know the future and to’ act on it is to change it,” replied Fletcher. “Maybe Rusty will be able to tell us when the alcohol wears off a bit. He tries to saturate himself with the stuff to stop his precognition, but he’s never entirely successful. In the morning he’ll be sober for a short while; perhaps he’ll be able to tell us where the Shaltus-controlled stone is hidden. In the meantime you’d better do as he advised and get some more sleep.”

  Leah rose, looking uncertainly at Barbara’s bedroom door and at Rowen’s sleeping figure.

  Fletcher smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about them. I’ll wake Michael if your sister’s condition changes. I’d rather not disturb him now. Go on.”

  She nodded and headed for her room.

  While her father lived, she’d had a suite of room all to herself near his. Now she had only a tiny chamber just down the hall from the servants’ quarters

  She had been her father’s favorite child, despite her illegitimacy. She believed he had loved her Sylvan mother deeply. When her mother had died in childbirth, he’d taken Leah in as though she were one of his legitimate children.

  Leah thought that in his own mind he’d considered himself married to her mother, even though he’d had a wife. She knew he’d been forced into marriage to seal an alliance with Carlton’s neighboring kingdom of Westvirn. Yet she wondered why he had fallen in love with a Sylvan woman. Even in those days there had been hatred between the Sylvan and the humans. Her mother had been the daughter of the chief of the Ayers tribe. His relationship with her helped cement better relations between the humans and the Sylvan.

  When her father died, the fragile peace began to crumble. Although there had not yet been a war, it seemed inevitable. Already there had been border clashes and raids by both sides.

  Once inside her room Leah unbound her long, silver hair and brushed it out, changed into a light cotton nightgown, and climbed into bed.

  She felt exhausted and uneasy. The Shaltus presence seemed stronger now. She focused on her spellstone and again probed the castle, but she could not determine the whereabouts of the Shaltus-programmed stone.

  Hoping that Rusty’s prediction about the time of the next attack was correct, she forced her tense body to relax. She had to rest. Gradually her body’s fatigue prevailed over her anxiety, and she fell into a troubled sleep.

  Three

  It was sometime after dawn when a loud pounding awoke her. The insistence of the sound brought her completely awake.

  Sitting up she called out, “What is it?”

  “It’s Rowen.” His voice sounded urgent.

  “Just a minute.” She was already out of bed, slipping on her robe.

  She murmured a spellword that released the energy stored in the rune she’d carved on the door, and it unlocked and opened.

  Rowen stormed in. His spellstone glowed blue-white. His eyes searched her room anxiously.

  Tim Fletcher followed and also looked around. His thin face was tight with tension.

  “What is it?” she repeated.

  Rowen ignored her and turned to Fletcher instead. “Go get Lord S’Carlton. I’m sure it’s in here.”

  Fletcher nodded and was gone.

  “What’s here?”

  Rowen continued to study the room.

  “What’s going on?” she asked again, grabbing his arm and facing him. His gray eyes, level with her own, looked worried.

  “I’ve been searching the castle for the Shaltus-stone for several hours, gradually getting closer and closer to it. I think it’s in here.”

  “Here?” Leah looked around her room in surprise.

  How could the stone have been hidden in her room? Why would it be there?

  She crossed to the windows and pulled open the curtains covering the narrow, glass-enclosed slits. Although the morning’s light was warm and friendly, she felt a chill of foreboding.

  Rowen was now circling the room like a caged animal, trying to sense the Shaltus-stone. Every so often he’d stop, pick up an object, study it, and then put it down.

  “It can’t be here!” Leah murmured.

  She cupped her spellstone in her hands and focused on its amber depths. As she began a spell, the stone glowed warmly. The Shaltus-controlled presence was much stronger now, but try as she might she could not discover its origin. It seemed to pervade the entire castle with equal intensity.

  Suddenly Rowen halted and placed his hands above the meter-high plant sitting on her desk. It was a skytree seedling, a recent present from her Sylvan grandfather. With a sinking feeling Leah remembered that she’d received it less than a week before she’d begun to feel the wrongness within the castle.

  Rowen’s hands slowly circled the seedling, moving lower until they rested on the large clay pot at its base. His fingers dug gently into the earth. Then his powerstone flared as he touched something. He pulled it out gingerly and rubbed the dirt off.

  Lying on his palm was a dark spellstone about the size of a grape. It seemed to be a broken piece of a larger stone.

  “How did it get there?” Leah asked in shock.

  “You … you brought it here!” shouted a voice behind her.

  She whirled to face her half-brother. His face was contorted with rage. Behind him stood Fletcher and several castle guards.

  Leah shook her head in bewilderment. “No. Of course not.”

  “You’re in league with Shaltus. You’ve sold out to help your Sylvie friends,” Richard yelled.

  “No!” Turning to Rowen, she shook her head. “No.” “Where did you get this plant?” asked Rowen. His eyes held no accusation.

  “It was a present from my grandfather, Trask, chief of the Ayers tribe.”

  “You damn Sylvie traitor,” shouted Richard, lunging forward to grab Leah and shake her.

  “I didn’t … and grandfather wouldn’t have either,” she yelled at him, while she struggled to free herself from his painful grip. Then Fletcher seized Richard’s arm, and Rowen pulled Leah back away from him.

  “My grandfather wants peace between the Sylvan and the humans,” Leah said, gasping. She turned to Rowen. “He’s tried to keep the treaty my father made—it’s Richard who wants to break it. And the Sylvan would never join forces with anything as evil as the Shaltuswraith. Someone else must have planted the stone here… .”

  “We can discuss how the stone got here later,” said Rowen as he stepped between Leah and her half-brother. “The important thing to do is to destroy it now. Because of Rusty’s warning I started searching for the stone sooner than I normally would have. Its energy stores are still somewhat depleted. If I had waited, it would have been ready to attack by the time I found it. As it is …” He paused and smiled.

  He clenched his amethyst-colored spellstone in his right hand. Then he pressed it against the Shaltus-controlled crystal in his left.

  As the two stones met, the Shaltus-stone flashed like a ball of lightning. A blast of pain roared throughLeah’s head. Richard gasped. His wristlet stones blazed with fire.

  The lightning vanished.

  Rowen’s left hand now held only a charred lump that broke into scattered ashes as he spread his fingers. His own stone was apparently unharmed.

  Suddenly the blood drained from his face. He staggered, fell forward, and crashed to the floor with a sickening thud.

  Still reeling from the pain that throbbed through her head like thunder, Leah forced herself forward. She knelt beside the unconscious sorcerer. As he had aided her, she now helped him, pressing her hands against his to transfer energy to him. Concentrating on the link, she became oblivious to her surroundings and did not notice Fletcher kneel by her
side.

  She was equally unaware of her brother. His face flamed with anger and hatred.

  She didn’t hear him order the guards forward. She didn’t notice them until they grabbed her and pulled her away from Rowen, breaking the link. Reality returned abruptly.

  Richard was screaming at her.

  “Get away from him. You traitor. You’re just like your mother. Sylvie bitch! She bewitched my father, and she killed my mother!”

  Richard’s eyes blazed with a bitter fury that matched the tone of his voice. Evidently he blamed her for his own mother’s death because his father had been visiting the Ayers forest to see his Sylvan lover when Shaltus had invaded Bluefield.

  “That Sylvie killed my mother!” he repeated, stepping forward threateningly. Leah thought he was going to strike her, but instead he grabbed her arms and shook her violently.

  “And my father brought you here. His Sylvie whelp.” The acid in his voice shifted to the bitterness of envy. “You were his favorite, and all along you planned to betray us …”

  “No. It’s not true!” But he didn’t seem to hear her words or see the pain in her face.

  He twisted her arm roughly. “How did you get the stone in here? What does Shaltus plan to do? What did you sell out for?”

  “I swear, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Liar!”

  Suddenly Leah realized that there was no way she could reason with her half-brother. There was madness in his eyes. It seemed that all the real and imagined hurts he had suffered through the years because of his mother’s death and Leah’s presence in the castle had built into a wall of hatred so fixed in his mind that it separated him from reality.

  When he ordered one of the guards to prepare for her execution, she realized that some dark part of his mind had been waiting for an excuse for such an act for a long, long time.

  “Take her down to the shielded cell,” commanded Richard. It was a dungeon cell with silver walls to hold anyone with psychic powers. “The execution will take place at sunset.”

  As the guards started to move forward, Richard suddenly raised his hands to stop them. “I think I’d better take this first, though,” he said, reaching for her spellstone.