Tanis drew the girl close into the shelter of his arm, dropped his sword's point, and walked her to the fire. Silently he helped her to sit, gathered up their scattered blankets, and wrapped her in them. He whispered a word to her and waited for her answering nod. When he left the bright circle of the fire, he gestured for Flint to join him. The old dwarf moved away from the light with great reluctance, still nursing his stinging hand.
"Are you all right?" Tanis asked, turning Flint's hand palm upward.
"No," Flint snapped, "I am not! I am burned and scared witless!"
"Badly burned?"
Flint scowled and snatched his hand away. "Badly enough," he growled. But when he saw the real concern in his friend's eyes, he shrugged. "But not so that I can't wield my axe if need be. Though what good that will do us against ghosts, I'd like to know."
"So you revise your opinion of Riana then?"
"That she is a liar? Aye, she's no liar."
"And a lack-wit?"
Flint snorted and shook his head. "I stand by that. And I'll add that we're both lack-wits if we continue on through this cursed forest."
"I'll go on."
"I thought you would. Well, then, so will I." He glared down at his palms, scowling at the blisters that were already beginning to form there. "I owe someone for this, and I do not like unpaid debts."
Wretched dawn silvered the eastern sky, blighting Gadar's certainty that his work of the coming night would be undisturbed. His phantom warriors had failed in their task, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. They could not be called into service again until darkness swallowed the days light. By that time the intruders might well have found him.
Or they might not. It was a chance that he would have to take. The time was right for the casting of his spells, the victim had been chosen. One night hence would be too late.
For a moment, regret, sharp and even bitter, touched Gadar's heart. It was ever this way when he was faced with this task. The young man was full of youth's bright flame. The blood ran quick and sparkling in this one, as it had in the others. Youth would dance in his eyes, sing in his veins, and light his face with his golden hopes.
The groaning that had begun with the dawn's coming now increased in persistence, telling of one who struggled against the black prison of unconsciousness, pushing against it with feeble strength and stronger heart. It would have been easier to sink back, rest for a moment, then try again. But this was a strong-willed young man. This, then, would be the one who would give his life's essence.
"Boy," Gadar whispered, "if there were another way-" But there was no other way. Any other way had been lost to him the first time he'd set his foot on this dark path. What was one more life now balanced against the many he had taken and the one he must preserve at the price of even his own soul? There was no profit, and only dangerous distraction, in regret.
Gadar crossed the chamber, stopped at a large table, and checked the components of the spell that he would work tonight. Everything was ready: the wormwood, the powdered dust of a crushed sapphire, the rosemary sprigs, the dark heart s blood of a breeding doe.
Gadar had no intention of trapping the spirit of his chosen victim in any temporal prison, and this was the difficult part of the spell. Were he to simply thrust the spirit of the young man into an en-mazed prison, he would not achieve his purpose. He had a better use for his victim's life.
For that reason he had chosen the stocky young man with the thick chestnut hair. Daryn, his name was, and he seemed strong enough to provide the life essence the mage needed.
At least until he could find someone stronger.
The mage paused, glanced again at the lightening sky. It might be, he thought, testing a new idea, that it was not such a bad thing that his ghostly assassins had failed in their dark charge. It might be that, were he to let the intruders find him, he would be well rewarded. There was no use for the persistent girl or the old dwarf. But a half-elf, young and strong as this one, would give life for many, many more years than the pathetic young humans he'd been using till now.
"Yes," he whispered, running his fingers along the edge of the table, "and peace, for a time, at least, and a rest from this weary work."
He could not send his phantoms for the half-elf now. Not with the sun's bright light shining. But the half-elf would come on his own. Gadar smiled coldly. That persistent girl would see to it. He would let them find him then. He would put no more obstacles in their way than he needed to gain the time to work this spell now.
Daryn's young life would buy him the time he needed. And time was, after all, the purchase he'd always sought to make.
The forest had darkened long before the sun set. The whisperings of the night before became ominous growlings in the underbrush, sobbing wails in the boughs of the trees. A wild wind danced. The little party of three moved upward, carefully picking a barely seen path through the giant pines. They were touched by a chill that put Tanis in mind of winter.
That morning, in grim jest, Flint had suggested that if they simply let the forest's evil feel guide them, they'd no doubt come upon their ghostly attackers.
Tanis had not taken the suggestion seriously until, moving north for lack of any better direction, they each began to feel the same nameless dread.
"Like a foul odor, a clammy touch," Riana had whispered. Her hands, clenched in white-knuckled fists at her sides, trembled when she spoke. Some fearful thing seemed to hover just beyond their sight, breathing in the trees like no wind that Tanis had ever heard before. It groaned piteously, and wept with winter's dying sign.
Shivering in the raw wind, Tanis nodded to Flint. "We could follow this feeling like a well-marked road."
"Aye, well we could," Flint said, running his thumb along the haft of his axe. "But what would we find? Nothing we'd like to, I'll guess." The memory of the phantoms sent more chill through him than the real wind stinging his face now.
The faint path broadened for a while, a rocky trail barren even of dirt, leading them ever upward. It seemed, at times, that the wind's voice really was the wail of dead things keening for life's loss. The trees, naked and stunted, warped as though by some de mented hand, were only ugly growths clinging to life by the whim of cruel nature. Then, when no thing grew at all, when the forests had beenleft far behind and their breath was coming hard and fast in the bit ter, thinning air, the path narrowed again, fading to a pass between high peaks. It vanished suddenly at the top of a boulder-strewn cliff. Behind them lay the dark forest, before them, and far below, a narrow vale.
Riana, shivering and exhausted, took the last few yards of the pass with Tanis's help. But the steely determination that had brought her this far still glimmered in her eyes. She's got more heart than strength, Tanis thought.
"We'll rest here a moment, Riana. We all need it."
She nodded dumbly, too tired to speak, and sank to a seat on an ice-kissed boulder. Tanis eyed her doubtfully for a moment, then went to join Flint at the cliff's edge.
"She's not going to be able to go much farther, Tanis. The girl's exhausted."
"I know. And she isn't the only one. You've been quiet these few hours, Flint. How are you?"
Flint blew on fingers that were stiff and achingly cold. "My bones are freezing. I suppose this is what comes of listening to the wild stories of pretty young women who lose their brothers and lovers in the forest?"
"Lover? Who, Karel? What makes you say that?"
Flint snorted and shook his head. "Anyone who's heard her story can tell that. Though its likely news to her, too. She's doubtless devoted to her brother, but it's been this young Karel we've heard about time and again, hasn't it? Young girls don't generally blush quite so deeply when they are talking about family friends."