I glanced up, praying for clouds and total darkness, an all-covering blanket of black that would shield us from the soldiers. But almost immediately my fears welled anew and I imagined the hunters, aided by the Search-stone, creeping forward purposefully within that darkness, unseen and deadly, their cold blades seeking my heart. No, I prayed again. No darkness. Please!
I was trembling now, but Megan’s hand came down upon my arm, gripping my wrist, then patting the skin. I glanced towards her and licked my dry lips with a drier tongue.
‘Fear not,’ she whispered. ‘They will not see us.’ Extending her hand she pointed at the leading soldier. He cried out and dropped the stone, which fell to the earth and blazed with a fierce light, causing the soldiers to shield their eyes. Leaning her back against the cave wall, Megan gestured with her right hand. The entrance shimmered and, as I looked towards the soldiers, it seemed I was viewing them through a screen of water.
Slowly they approached the rock wall. There were some twenty of them gathered now, lean and wolflike, swords in their hands. They halted some few feet before us, scanned the ground, then moved on.
After a while there was silence beyond the cave.
‘What did you do?’ I ventured at last.
‘Think through your fear, Owen,’ she advised. ‘Do not let it master you. The illusion is no more than you could have achieved. Any man who can create the Dragon’s Egg should find little difficulty in displaying a wall of rock where there is none.’
I felt foolish then, for she was right. The rock-face was dark; it would take little skill to cast an image across the cave-mouth, and the soldiers had been half-blinded by the destruction of the stone.
‘But I could not have destroyed their stone,’ I pointed out defensively.
‘No,’ she agreed, ‘that you could not do. Azrek has a powerful magus at his side, and I think you will need my… skills before this game is played out.’
‘What you did was sorcery,’ I said softly. ‘No trick with light and gentle heat. You burned a stone to dust and ash.’
‘I am allied to no dark powers, Owen. Sorcery and magick are not as far removed from one another as you would like to believe. Magick is — as you rightly say, merely tricks with light, illusions. But sorcery is a different kind of… trick. All I did with the stone was to create enormous heat. It is not difficult, it is merely a more powerful variation of the Warming spell.’
‘How is it done?’ I asked her.
‘I cannot teach you sorcery in a single night, Owen, nor would I wish to try. But here is your first lesson: when you rub your hands together you create heat. Well, a stone is not as solid as it looks. It is made of more component parts than there are stars in the sky. I make them rub against one another. The heat generated is immense.’
‘You are mocking me, lady. A stone is a stone. If it was, as you say, made up of many parts, then air would be trapped within it and it would float on water.’
She shook her head. ‘All that you see in this world is not all that there is, Owen Odell. And your logic is flawed. I can make a stone float, or give a feather such weight that you could not carry it. But these lessons can be for another day. For now I want you to tell me why you did not create the rock-wall illusion.’
‘I did not think,’ I admitted. ‘I was frightened — close to panic.’
‘Yes, you were. Fear is good, for it makes us cautious and aids survival. Not so with terror. It is like slow poison, paralysing the limbs and blurring the mind. You have courage, Owen, else you would not have stood up for me at the Burning. But you are undisciplined. Never, when in danger, ask yourself, “What will they do to me?” Instead think, “What can I do to prevent them?” Or did you think that magick, and all the connected powers, were merely discovered in order to entertain revellers in inns, taverns and palaces?’
I was ashamed of my cowardice and said nothing, my thoughts hurtling back to childhood where my father had constantly berated me for lack of skill in the manly arts. I did not climb trees, for fear of the heights, nor learn to swim, for fear of drowning. High horses frightened me and the clashing of sword-blades made me cry. My brothers took to the game of war like young lions, and upon them he showered praise. But Owen was a weakling, worthless, a creature to be avoided. The great Aubertain — how I hated him for his cruel courage, his arrogance and his pride.
I gloried in his one weakness — fire. A long time before, when he himself was a child, he had been burned upon his left arm: the scars were still visible, white, ugly and wrinkled, stretching from wrist to elbow. Even into middle age he would jump if a fire-log cracked and spat sparks.
And then, one summer’s evening, a storehouse near the castle caught fire. Every villager and soldier ran to the blaze, human chains forming to ferry buckets of water from the deep wells to the men at the head of the lines. The fire was beyond control and bright sparks flew into the night sky, carried by the breeze to rest upon the thatched roofs of nearby cottages.
My father, brothers and I organized work parties, carrying water into homes as yet untouched and drenching the thatch. There was a two-storeyed house close by. Sparks entered through an open window, igniting the straw matting that covered the ground floor. Flames billowed up.
I remember a woman screaming, ‘My baby! My baby!’ She was pointing to an upper window. My father was standing beside me at the time and I saw upon his face a look of sheer terror. But then, with a snarl, he tore loose his cloak, wrapped it around his face and shoulders and ran into the burning building.
Moments later I saw him at the upper window with the babe in his arms. Climbing to the sill he leapt to the yard below, his hair and beard on fire. He landed awkwardly and we heard his leg snap, but he twisted his body as he fell to protect the infant he held. Men ran forward then, smothering the flames that writhed about him. The mother retrieved her babe, and my father was carried back to the castle.
I am ashamed to say that my hatred for him swelled, roaring up like the blaze around me.
‘Why so melancholy?’ asked Megan, and I shivered as my mind fled back to the present.
‘I was thinking of my father.’ I told her then of the unhappiness of my childhood, and the story of the great fire that all but destroyed the estate.
‘Do you still think you hate him, Owen?’
‘No, but his treatment of me still causes me pain. The memories are jagged and sharp.’
‘You are much like him.’
‘You misread me, Megan. He is a warrior, a killer, a knight. I am none of these things, nor would wish to be.’
‘What do you wish to be?’
I looked out at the night sky, considering her question.
‘I would like to be content, Megan. Happy. I have known in the woods moments of genuine joy, like when Piercollo sang or when Mace brought the treasure back to the people. But not the happiness I dream of.’
‘And what would bring it to you?
’I do not know. Love, perhaps? A family and a quiet home? Fame? To be known as the greatest bard in the Angostin kingdoms?’
‘These will not bring you what you seek,’ she told me, her voice soft.
‘No? How can you be sure?’
‘There is a man you must first find. He will give you the answers.’
‘He would need to be a great teacher, this man. Who is he?’
You will know him when you meet him,’ she answered. ‘Is your father still alive?’
I shrugged. ‘I have no knowledge of his affairs. I have not contacted my family for more than six years. But, yes, I would think he is still alive. He was strong as an ox and would now be only forty-two years of age.’