"Flint, you surprise me."
"Why, because I can use my eyes? I'm not so old as all that, youngster. But that's not what concerns me now. What I want to know is where in the Abyss we are."
Tanis looked down into the valley, a deep cleft in the mountains shrouded in a thick mist. "I think we're about where we set out to be. Look." He pointed to a cleared patch in the mist far below.
Black, built from the heart and bone of the mountains, a vast, turreted castle rose, a jagged skeletal finger. The setting sun was a fiery wound in the brittle blue sky, bleeding light across the forbidding dark stone. Around them the sobbing wind mourned and gibbered.
"Can you feel it, Flint?"
The sense of evil that had been their guide to this place seemed to boil and rumble in the vale below as though this were the source of the keening winds and icy fear.
"Aye, I can feel it. And I don't much like it." The dwarf glanced over his shoulder at Riana, who sat hunched and shivering, her eyes on the frozen rocks at her feet. "Tanis, I could well believe that those ghosts came from this vale." He looked out into the valley again and felt the touch of something colder than the bitter wind brush up against his soul. "And I think, too, that something knows we're here."
Were he not so tired, Tanis would have smiled. He'd known the hard-headed old dwarf too many years not to be surprised by the fanciful turn of his thoughts. He looked closely at his old friend. What he saw in Flint's eyes made him shiver. It was sure knowledge that made Flint say what he had. Though the wry twist of his smile told Tanis that he'd no idea where the knowledge came from.
"Just a feeling," the dwarf muttered.
"I think you're right. And I think, too, that whatever knows we're here will not let us turn back now. It will be dark soon, and none of us is up to a trip down to that castle at night. We'd best be going."
"Aye, well, consider this, Tanis: when they attacked her camp, those phantom raiders seemed to have little interest in Riana. It was only Daryn and Karel they ghosted away. And there is something that tells me, too, that they will have small enough interest in an old dwarf."
Tanis did smile then. "Are you claiming to have The Sight, Flint?"
"No. I'm remembering her story."
He remembered it all the way down to the valley. Though it should not have been beyond his skill to find the thin, shale path, Flint, a hill dwarf who'd spent many years in the Kharolis Mountains, thought the trail came too easily to hand. He would not have sworn his oath that it had not been there before. Still, it had the look of a thing misplaced.
"Like it hasn't been here long," he grumbled to Tanis. "But it looks old."
"And it's the next best thing to vertical," Tanis said, catching hold of Riana, who slid on the loose shale. "The sooner we're off it, the safer our necks will be."
Flint had his doubts. And from the look of barely controlled fear in her eyes, he thought Riana shared them. Still, she righted herself with the same hard-eyed purpose that had brought her this far. Flint felt a new and grudging respect for her. He reached back and took her hand.
"This way, Riana. And have a care, the shale gets looser and smaller. I've no wish to tumble down the rest of the path."
"Riana?" Riana… Riana… Riana… Karel's whisper echoed in his mind with all the force of thunder crashing overhead. The flags of the stone floor were hard as midwinter's ice beneath his cheek. His leather jerkin was no protection against the chill draft wandering across the floor.
"Daryn?"
Slowly he became aware that he was alone. No chain held him, no manacle bound him to this floor. Still, he was unable to move even a finger. And Riana and Daryn were gone.
Alone! But where? Though he struggled hard with reluctant memory, Karel could not fill in the gap between the icy grasp of the disembodied warrior who'd touched his hand-how long ago? a day? two? — and the chill of this stone floor now. Yet some time had passed. He could see Lunitari riding dark clouds just beyond the window above his head. When he'd last seen the crimson moon she'd been still waning. Now she waxed, though only slightly.
Where was he?
"Where are you?"
Fear raced through Karel then, but so firmly held was he that he could not move. The voice was old but hard and touched with deadly power. Like the whisper of a ghost, he heard an aching answer.
"Here, within your reach."
"Give me your true name."
"Daryn, Teorth's son."
Though it was his friend's voice that answered the formally posed question, Karel barely recognized it. Dull, will-bereft, it held none of the steady confidence he knew as Daryn's. He trembled inwardly, nauseated by the realization that it was not Daryn's will that made his friend answer, but someone else's.
Somewhere, out of his sight, Karel heard the snap and sign of a fire. The bitter scent of burning wormwood tainted the cool air.
"Hear me, Daryn, Teorth's son."
Karel squeezed his eyes shut as that commanding voice dropped to a secret, murmuring chant. He felt the stone floor start to hum and vibrate. Magic!
Tension, so thick and real that he might have been able to reach out and touch it, filled the very air of the chamber. Leaping flames cast black shadow and lurid light through the room. The tension of the magic's power burst and filled the chamber with the dancing rainbows of light.
Daryn moaned. The sound came from deep within his heart, winding and writhing, and touched Karel's soul with dread. He struggled against his invisible bonds. His muscles shrieked with the effort, his head filled to bursting with pain. The sweat of his effort stung his eyes, splintered the shimmering rainbows of magic's light into shards of furious color.
"Daryn!" he gasped. But Daryn did not respond. He could not.
In a bloody circle, stunned with magic, dazed by his own horrified realization that Gadar clutched his soul, Daryn screamed.
Though Tanis scouted carefully once they'd crossed the scree and entered the little valley, he found no sign that the black castle was guarded. But even as he returned to his companions, darkness, thick and black as a mourner's cloak, fell with startling suddenness.
Riana gasped, but Flint only shook his head as though to say that he expected something of the sort. "Night's dark is never this heavy," he muttered. He saw his companions as faint reddish outlines in the unrelieved blackness. Tanis, too, would be able to see. But he knew that Riana, with only her human night vision, weak by the standards of dwarves and elves, must be nearly sightless.
"Tanis, give her a minute," he whispered. To Riana he said, "Close your eyes for a moment, then see if you can't get yourself adjusted to this darkness."
She did, bowing her head in concentration. But when she opened her eyes again she only shook her head.
"It's like being blind!"
"Aye," Flint agreed, "and likely that's how you're meant to feel." He took her hand and guided it to his shoulder. "Get your bearings, girl. Tanis, what did you find out there?"
"Nothing much. There is a postern gate around the north side. We can make for that. The main entry is unguarded, but I'd like to make as quiet an entrance as we can. Let's head for that postern."
"I'll not argue. Lead on then."
The path Tanis led them along was narrow and rocky, curving around the north side of the valley and down through a small decline to a tall, slim tower thrusting up from the main keep. Staying close to the black wall of the tower, Tanis crept slowly toward the weathered wooden door where he waited for Flint and Riana, still clinging to the old dwarf's shoulder, to join him.
The door opened immediately onto a tall flight of dark slippery stairs. Cracked and shattered by age, they were dangerous with sickly gray moss and only wide enough for one to walk.