''Akhor, soulfriend, meet me at the Chamber of Souls,'' cried Shikrar, his mindvoice faint in despair.''Lost, lost, twice cursed and twice bereft, all my ancestors bear me witness I will have them back!''
We are brothers in the soul, after all.
Shikrar crouched to fly but I cried out, aloud and in true-speech, ''Eldest, leave me not here! I know what has befallen, I heard the Lost cry out as did you, bear me hence I beg you!''
I might as well have kept silence. "There is no time!" he cried, and sprang into the night with a clap of his vast wings. It blew us over.
"Damn," I said aloud, as Rella and I stood and brushed ourselves off as Shikrar disappeared. "What in all the Hells is going on?" she asked. "I'll tell you as we run," I replied and was starting to follow after Shikrar when behind and above me I heard a roar like nothing on earth. I threw myself to the ground from sheer instinct and felt the wind batter me, heard the clap of Dragon wings, and watched as another took to the skies. It was hard to tell in the moonlight, but it was too large and too bright for Kédra and I only knew of one other nearby—one whose bright copper hide would reflect moonlight well.
Rishkaan.
Damn, damn, damn!
''Kédra! Swiftly, to me!'' I cried, dragging Rella behind me, and met him coming out of Akor's chambers.
My legs are weak, my old pain has come back even as I run with this burden of wealth. I stumble as fast as I may.
Curse it, the sign Berys warned me of! A tingling at my throat, the amulet drags at my neck and sends sharp stabs into my heart with every step. The wound on my chest where I scratched myself with the spike burns with the nearness of Raksha-fire, and I cannot get rid of the high voices of the gems. How should gems speak? They are cursed, perhaps they are demons themselves, Lords of Hell what have I got?
My two hours are all but sped.
I cannot find the Boundary! How can this be, I returned only last night with no trouble—but the gems, they sing, I hear them try to speak, their sounds confuse me, I cannot see despite the bright moon. The gems and their golden cask drag at me. Hells and damnation, I have to get out of here!
I can only run and hope I will blunder into the Boundary by chance. Lords of Hell, guide my steps who seek to serve you. The first of these gems will I give in free offering to you, if you will get me past the Boundary. Hells and damnation. I hear in every breath their step behind me, feel every moment the hot wind that precedes my death. I saw the fury of the one who destroyed the demon, I know my life is forfeit if my amulet fades while still I walk in the forbidden lands. I remember the corpse of the youth who crossed over, I could not eat for days after—what will they do to me if they catch me with their greatest treasure?
Faster, man, faster! Hell's teeth, the gems are keening high and shrill, terror flows cold up my spine bone by bone, freezing my legs and my heart, threatening to leave me here forever, the frozen statue of a running man. Your life, Marik, stay alive! Run, run with what strength you have left, for the amulet beats now its pulse to match my heart, faster, faster—there!
Dark in the moonlight the Boundary rises before me, safety in wooden rails. Fast as thought, Marik, run, run—through! Through and beyond, tear off the damned amulet that bums now where it touches chest and hand, throw it from me. I slow, out of breath, I watch as it glows brightly once more, bright as it flashed at first, but the glow now is a rich red, like light through blood. It lies on the ground, gleaming brighter and brighter. I cannot look away, it fills my sight like a red star fallen to earth.
I tear my eyes away at last and run, now south, where the ship lies waiting that will carry me safe from this place of horror.
Every bone in my body cried out when the soulgems of the Lost were stolen, every instinct told me to fly to the Chamber of Souls, and so I did, swift as wings would carry me. I had only just landed when Rishkaan arrived, a fury in his eyes that frightened me. Akhor came as swiftly as he could, but he had been far to the west.
I tried to reason with Rishkaan, but I might as well have spoken with a stone. He rushed past me into the Chamber, sniffing for all he was worth. "No scent, no scent, how can that be, there must be some trace, there has to be—''
''Rishkaan, remember what the Gedri Rella said, that he had come and gone without our knowledge before. We will never find him this way."
He snapped his head to face me. "You are right," he said in a voice of iron. "He must have gone—" He did not stay even to complete his thought, but sped away past me into darkness.
I could not follow, and did not want to. If Rishkaan needed vengeance, if in his fury he slew this Marik, I would not stand in his way. I would await Akhor here, in my ravished Chamber, where the soulgems of my ancestors looked down in contempt on the failure of the Keeper of Souls.
The soulgems of the Lost sang loudly of their theft; I could not ignore it. I took Kédra by surprise and pushed him aside—he is much younger and smaller than I, after all— and leapt into the sky as soon as I was out of Akhor's cave, flying towards the Chamber of Souls.
It was not only the theft that compelled me. I could not rid myself of that vision, it lingered before my mind's eye like an image of the sun. Akhor, dead, his body turned to ash—that was bad, but death comes to all in their time. Far worse, worst of all, the horrible clarity of the Gedri Lanen with her younglings. They were a monstrous union of the two Kindreds, able to change from one to another at will. It was the sight of that perversion that struck bright flame within me. Such abomination I would spend my life to prevent.
The Silver King, Akhor the Wise, I had hoped for so much from him. Still, he would get over this Gedri child. It was merely a passing madness. He had many years yet in which to accomplish the purpose for which he had been born.
As long as my dream remained unfulfilled.
I saw Shikrar land before me, but the time for subtlety and obedience was past. I ran before him into the Chamber, where stray glints of moon and starlight filtered down from the airhole above and struck brief gleams from the soulgems of the Ancestors on the back wall. Someday I shall have my place there, I thought briefly, a good end for a long life, rest and peace and the voices of your descendants to call you forth from time to time—but as I knew it must be, when I turned to look at the flickering depths of the Lost Ones, I could but stare, for all my knowledge silent and open-mouthed, at the pedestal where they had rested near five thousand years, empty now of anything but memory.
Shikrar reminded me I could not trace him by smell, so I must outwit the creature. Where should he go but the fastest way back to the Gedri camp?
I hurried out of the Chamber of Souls and made the straightest way to the Boundary, searching still as I went for the smell of the Gedri or for Raksha-trace. I found none, but still I followed the way the evil one must have gone.
XVII
THE LOST
It was but a moment after Rishkaan had gone that Akhor bespoke me. ''What news, Shikrar?'' he asked urgently.
"Rishkaan is gone after the thief," I replied, and in the Language of Truth I could not keep my underthought from adding, "and I did nothing to stop him."