The harsh voice broke through the sweet, warm darkness that had enveloped Kaz like a fur. He wanted to tell the voice to leave him in the quiet solitude of his slumber. What right did the voice have to disturb him? He was tired and needed rest, a long rest.
“Kaz! Hear me!”
He wanted to tell the human to go away. The human named Tesela. The human named Tesela who was a cleric. The human cleric named Tesela who was trying to pull him from his sleep.
Wot sleep! a part of him whispered.
His mind, which seemed to have fragmented, began to coalesce again. Tesela was a cleric of Mishakal. She would not disturb him without a reason. The human was trying to help him. The thought of a feeble, human female helping a full-grown male minotaur amused him for some reason, and he started to laugh. It came out as a gurgle.
Tesela must have heard it, for her voice became excited. ‘Thank you, Mishakalf Thank you!”
“Stop…” Kaz forced his mouth and tongue to work. “Stop shouting… in my ears.”
“Kaz!” He felt the warmth of another body on his. The minotaur began to feel other things as well, especially a nauseating sensation swelling in his stomach.
“Move!” He bellowed in a voice loud enough to make his own ears ring. Tesela moved away from him, and Kaz rolled over just in time to keep from drenching his own body with vomit. It seemed for some time that every meal he had ever eaten was departing his body in haste. Gradually, however, he finished. Disgusted, he rolled away.
It was some time before Kaz felt up to facing the others. Tesela gave him water and a cloth. Wiping his snout dry, the minotaur glanced at the two humans. Both were pale, especially Darius, who looked at least as bad as Kaz felt.
“What… what happened?”
“We all became ill,” Tesela said gravely. “We were poisoned, I think.”
“I had a wild notion about that before I-” Kaz’s eyes widened. “Tesela, how close was I to death?”
“As close as Darius. You’re bigger, but you finished your bowl. He was only halfway through.” The cleric beamed. “Mishakal guided my hand. Through the medallion, she could protect me, but not you. I had to act as her channel. That was what the medallion’s glow meant. It was warning us of the danger.”
Kaz stumbled to his feet. The selfsame pot of soup still sat on the table. Kaz sent the pot and its contents flying. “Sargas take that elf! Where is he?” The minotaur turned his gaze toward the window. “It’s dark. How long has it been?”
“Midnight is upon us,” Darius offered. “We owe a great deal to the lady here, and to her mistress.”
Tesela shook her head in wonder. “I didn’t think it was possible to heal someone so quickly. Not someone as near death as you. I think, given practice-Mishakal forbid!-and the will, I might be able to do it as quickly most every time! If only I’d known! The lives I could have saved!”
Kaz felt his legs grow steadily stronger. Try as he might, though, he could not yet lift his battle-axe properly. “Where is Argaen Ravenshadow? For that matter,” Kaz suddenly recalled, “where’s Delbin?”
“Mishakal forgive me!” Tesela leaped to her feet. “He could be dying of poison at this very moment!”
The trio searched the main room of the library as quickly as possible. It became apparent that neither Delbin nor Argaen were in the immediate vicinity. With a sinking feeling, Kaz knew where they should look.
“The vaults!” he muttered.
That Delbin could get past the much-vaunted safeguards of the Knights of Solamnia was a certainty in the minotaur’s mind. Why Ravenshadow would try to poison them was another question.
“What can we do?” a pale-faced Darius asked.
Kaz shook his head, trying to clear it. He lifted his axe and knew that he still lacked the strength to use the weapon properly. Battling against crazed knights was not something he wanted to do, anyway. And Kaz did not doubt the abilities of Argaen Ravenshadow. Somehow he had gotten Delbin to agree to try to enter the vaults, perhaps by holding as incentive the lives of the two humans and Kaz.
“We’ve no choice,” the minotaur said reluctantly. “I can’t leave Delbin, and I can’t fight. I think we should demand an audience with the Grand Master. Sane or not, I think that any warning I give will be enough to stir Oswald interest. You two had better remain here in case I’m wrong.”
“Would you call me a coward, minotaur?” Darius demanded. “And yourself a fool? You have more of a chance of succeeding if you are accompanied by a member of the knighthood as your guard.”
“They might run both of you through without a second thought,” Tesela reminded them. “Argaen said-”
Kaz snorted angrily. “Argaen said a lot of things that I find suspect now.”
The column slowed. Bennett had no desire to call a halt now, but advice from his uncle rang in his head.
“Making good time in the day is no reason to go blindly in the night, lad,” the elder knight would say. “Many’s the time a patrol rode straight into an ambush. Go slow… steady but slow.”
“Steady but slow,” he muttered.
“What was that, milord?” the ranger next to him asked.
“I want you to go scout up ahead. Be careful. We’ll be following at a slower pace.”
The man looked at him critically. “You intend to travel during the night?”
“We must. Can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“The-” How can I put it? Bennett wondered. “The- presence-has withdrawn! We should have felt it by now, tearing at our minds, threatening our sanity…” The knight let his voice fade away as he recalled some of the things he had done under the sway of that power, that spell. He cursed silently.
The ranger was happy his face was hidden by the darkness. His nervousness always grew worse when Bennett talked like this. There was always the fear that the madness had left a permanent mark on those he rode with. The ranger sighed.
Bennett was still insistent. “We will move on! You have your orders, man!”
“Yes, milord.” The ranger urged his horse forward and rode off.
Staring off into the darkness, Bennett tried to make out Vingaard Keep. He knew that, on a sunny day, the outline would have been visible near the horizon. Sunlit days were a rare commodity in recent months, however. It was almost as if the war were beginning all over again.
A bad feeling was developing, a feeling that something was going to happen very soon, and that Bennett was going to arrive too late to do anything about it. A disquieting feeling.
With a wave of his hand, he summoned one of his aides. The knight saluted his lord. “Sir?”
“How are the men holding up, Grissom?”
“We are Knights of Solamnia, milord!”
At one time, that would have been all the answer Bennett needed to go charging pell-mell through the dark toward Vingaard Keep. Not now. Another knight, these five years dead, had taught him otherwise.
“How are they really holding up, Grissom?”
The broad-faced knight shrugged. “They could use rest, but none of them are unfit. We could ride three more days before the first would begin to keel over. I think some of the horses would go first.”
The hint of a smile touched Bennett’s lips. “If we ride through the night, we can be at Vingaard before morning. Have you felt anything at all, Grissom?”
“Nothing, milord.” The aide sounded hopeful. “Could that mean the threat has been crushed? That the spell has been broken by our brethren who remained behind?”
“Unlikely, if you recall our own minds as we rode off to-what was it, anyway?-to crush our nonexistent enemies to the south or something?”
“I… forget.”
Bennett nodded. “I force myself to remember. We have much to answer for, spell or no spell.”