Well, the provenance of the things did not matter at the moment. My life did. Therefore I staggered and sweated and even managed to vomit in the bushes. Truth to tell, I felt sick enough, though it was not winesickness but strain and fear. Oh, yes, I was fearful. In the night hours I had reached for Dorn. He had come into my mind slowly, reluctantly, murmuring “Necromancer Nine, Peter, Necromancer Nine.” I could get nothing else out of him, and I had not needed that warning that I was at grave risk. I had already figured that out for myself.
It was not long until Nap confronted me with a false smile and prying questions. Had I drunk the special wine he had given me last night? I answered with vague noddings, sick grins, avowals that one more drop of anything would have killed me indeed. He got no satisfaction, and I knew it would not be more than a few hours before he would try something again. Let him think me an idiot. I did not think much better of myself.
I needed some other Talent, and this made me fretful, weighing and discarding notion after notion. I could shift into some other form if I left my horse and all belongings behind me. I was reluctant to do that. There was a great distance still to travel, I thought. Instinct told me that Trandilar would not move Nap. He was of a kind impervious to the beguilement of others. He was also of a kind who would not be fearful of the dead. Therefore some other Talent. Not Elator, as that would lose me horse and gear, and Elators could only move themselves between known locations. I knew no location forward on the journey, so any move would lose me leagues already traveled. Armiger? Again, horse and gear lost if I flew away. The Talents of Fire? Or Healing? What good were these to me? A Demon’s Talent for Reading? Perhaps, if that would let me know what was in Nap’s mind. Musing thus, I rode along beside the icy little wagon, seeing the mist rise from it like the mists far behind me in the Bright Demesne. Nothing presented itself as a good strategy. All seemed forced, difficult, possibly dangerous.
Then I saw the cliffs ahead of us, looming against the lowering sky, for it had been chill and rainy during the early hours and was only now clearing. Cliffs, crumbly at the rim, trailing away in long talus slopes at their bases. An idea began to form, slowly, only bones of thought still to become fleshed and finished. The sun came from behind the clouds, hot and impatient. I reached into the pouch at my belt and found the little image of Shattnir, First Sorcerer, great lady of Power. She did not speak to me as the others had done. Instead, she flowed into my veins and across my skin, bound me around with her net, tied me into her being, and began to take the heat from the sun and place it somewhere within. I could feel it building within me, a tightness, as though my skin were stretched and swollen. I knew my eyes were bulging and my lips turning outward, puffed, but my reflection in the polished harness plate between the horse’s ears showed no change in my appearance. “Not too much,” I begged silently. “Enough, Shattnir, but not too much.” She did not listen but went on taking the power from the bright sky, more and more and more, until at last I gave up waiting to explode and let her find room for it all. When I quit holding my breath, the swollen feeling abated slightly, and evidently there was room for it all for we rode so until the mountains rose across the sun to make a long, violet-gray shade for our stopping place.
The fires were lit, the silent pawns began their evening chores and routines. Izia moved among the horses, examining their hooves, stroking their glossy hides, murmuring to them. I excused myself to go away from the camp, unsurprised when one of the booted men followed me. I did not go into the copse, however, but up the rocky slope against the cliff, stumbling a little on the scree, seeing loose bits of it slide and rattle beneath my feet with hopeful satisfaction. There was a hollow there, a place where a piece of the cliff had broken away from the main mass leaving a narrow space behind it, no larger than a closet. I eased myself within, watching my follower peering after me. Well enough.
I reached into the pouch and took the image of Wafnor into my hand, first and greatest Tragamor. I became a room into which a man with a cheerful face entered, laughing, grasping the hands of those there with a fond greeting. Almost I could hear him, “Dorn, Trandilar, Shattnir, how well you all look. Oh, it is good to see my friends again.” And then he was at my side saying, “And what have we to do?”
Perhaps I told him, perhaps he simply knew. I cannot really describe what it is like. Sometimes it is like telling another person something, sometimes it is like talking to oneself, sometimes simply like knowing. Within me I felt his arms reach up, up along the cliff face, higher and higher to the rimrock fifty manheights or more above, to grasp the stones there and move them, one, two, a dozen, slowly down and down until they began to roll and fall, to tumble clacking against others, knocking, more and more, down, an avalanche of stone, toward my hidden closet behind the stone, a rumbling roar as I shrieked to the man who watched me, “Look out! Rock fall!” One glimpse of his face, a white oval around the round hole of a dark scream.
Then I could feel nothing and hear nothing except the grating roar of the stones. Still Wafnor reached out to them, stacking this one and that one as they fell, arranging them over me, over and around like a cave while outside the shuddering cave the stones still fell for long moments into a shattered silence.
There were cracks among the stones around me, little crevices to let in the air and the sound. Through these I could hear the whinnying of beasts, snorts, cries of men, Izia’s scream as she tugged animals away from the tumbling stones. Wafnor reached out once more, across the camp to the place my horse was tethered with my pack and saddle still upon him, urged him away into the trees, out of sight of the camp, calmed the horse there to wait for me. Then Wafnor did nothing, I did nothing, and we merely waited and listened to the sounds.
“Where is he?” Laggy Nap, raging.
A voice in answer, shaky, almost hysterical. “I don’t know. He was against the rock, up in there, and it came down on top of him. He screamed at me to look out. You heard him scream. It came down right on top of him … buried … covered over.”
“Devils take it,” Nap screamed. “What started the fall?”
“Just started. Nothing. Didn’t see anything. No people, nothing moving. No thunder, nothing like that. Just started …”
“Shadow men? Did you see shadow men?”
“Nothing, sir. Nothing at all. He screamed, and the rocks were coming down.”
Nap once more, this time strident, calling in his servitors. “Get up here, you lot. We’ll have to dig him out!” He sounded frantic. Dig me out? And why? This was unexpected, but Wafnor did not seem disturbed. He reached high once again, sent a few small stones cascading at Nap’s feet, followed by a medium-sized boulder or two. High above I could feel Wafnor’s hands upon the megalith, swaying it.
“Get back, get back. The whole wall looks to come down. Oh, why did he come up here against the wall. Izia! Did he say anything to you?”
Her voice. “You know he did not, sir. He has said nothing to me out of your hearing. And now he is dead.”
“I was told to bring him,” Nap snarled. “Bring him to the west, to Tallman and the mumble-mouths. How can I go empty-handed?”
“Why would they do anything to you? It is not your fault the cliff fell. It is ill luck, but not your doing.”
“I have had ill luck since the Shifter sold you to me, fool. Ill luck all the years of our travel. I would you were dead beneath that rock instead of the one I was told to bring.” I heard the sound of a blow, a scream, then long silence.