"Be careful," he whispered. He waited until Riana was between him and Flint, then took the first steps carefully. So dark was the tower that they could make their way up only by slow, cautious steps. Silent as shadows they crept up and up until Flint was certain that the stairs must end on the mountain peaks.
And then, after an endless time of searching blindly for step after step, groping along crumbling stone walls for balance, Flint heard Tanis whisper back that the stairs ended in a corridor.
Light leaked into a high-ceilinged hallway from an intersection several hundred feet to the west. In the barely relieved darkness Flint saw Tanis reach for Riana's hand and help her up the last few steps.
Drawing a long slow breath, glad to be off the treacherous stairs, Flint reached behind him to adjust the balance of his axe, then stepped into the corridor. The dark stone walls wept with moisture, the floor beneath his feet was slick with green-scummed puddles.
It was then he realized that a wind was moaning where no wind should be. And beneath that moaning he heard voices, cold and gibbering.
"Tanis, I don't like this."
Riana turned, fearful questions in her eyes, her hand slipping away from Tanis's grip. Shadows leaped and danced around them as though cast there by a torch in a mad dancer's hand. Like bats smoked from a cave, the hollow, heartless voices of the dead swept round the high vaulted ceiling. The corridor filled with a tomb's chill.
Thickening suddenly, the shadows swirled to form into something black and vaguely manlike.
Before Flint could move or even shout a warning, a dark spectre reached to touch his friend, freezing him to stillness with its grasp. Horrified, he saw Tanis, his eyes suddenly still and glazed, his face like a carved death mask, turn.
Flint leaped, diving for Tanis, thinking to pull him away from the deadly hold of the black ghost. But, fast as he moved, he was too late. He felt for a moment the hard, real warmth of Tanis's arm beneath his hand. Then he felt nothing.
"No!" he howled, hitting out at the clammy stone wall in his fear and anger. "Tanis!" But Tanis was gone, vanished as though he had never been there. "No!" Flint struck the wall again, not feeling the sharp sting of stone tearing at his knuckles. "Tanis! Damn! Where are you!"
He would have hit the wall again in fury and an almost blind need to feel something solid and real, but a slim hand grasped his wrist, pulling his fist down.
"No, please stop!" Riana cried, "Flint, stop."
Flint rounded on the girl, his eyes flashing dangerously.
"Where is he?"
"He's gone-they took him, the way they took Ka-rel and Daryn. I don't know where he is!"
Voices whispered beneath the screams that filled the air, telling of torture and shattering agony. Gone, Flint thought furiously, holding onto his anger to warm the ice of fear from his blood. Gone! And left me here, damn it!
Down the corridor, toward where the gray light straggled in from some unknown source, he saw a dead torch in an old cresset. Flint ran for it, found another, and snatched them both up. Working quickly, he lighted both and shoved one into Riana's hands.
"Hang onto this," he growled, "and don't let it go out. Whatever these demons are, they do their filthy work in the dark. Aye, they had no love for our campfire: they'll keep their distance from our torches. We're going to look for Tanis. And I've no doubt that where we find him we'll find your brother and his friend."
Riana grasped her torch with both hands, to steady it. In thecareening shadows Flint's eyes were hard and frightening. "How how will we find him?"
Flint shifted his own torch to his left hand and hefted his battle-axe in his right. "We'll find him," he growled. "Have no doubt about that, girl. We'll find him." And when I do, he thought, still fanning his anger against his fear, he'll be lucky if I don't kick him from here to Solace forgetting me into this nightmare!
When they began to find the first bodies, Flint's fury turned to hollow fear. Riana, weeping openly now, stood rooted in the corridor, staring at the lifeless husks that had once been the strong bodies of young men. None of the bodies, some mouldering still, some whitened skeletons bleached by time's passage, showed the marks of a fight: no broken bones, no shattered skulls. Not one of them had battled his way to death.
They littered the corridor like discarded toys, used, broken, and cast aside.
Steeling himself to find what he knew he would not be able to bear to see, Flint moved carefully among them, searching. His blood pounded painfully in his head, his breathing was ragged, whispered fragments of prayers to gods few people acknowledge. Slowly, almost gently at times, he toed over one corpse after another, his hands locked in a death-hold on his axe. But none of the bodies was Tanis, and the most recently dead were still too long gone to have been either Karel or Daryn.
Breathing hard with his relief, he went back to Riana, took her hands in his own, and led her past the dead.
"No, there is no use struggling. You cannot move." Despite his own warning, Karel instinctively tried to reach a hand to the stranger. He grimaced and whispered again, "Don't try, you'll waste your strength. And you'll need it."
The words echoed in Tanis's head, bounding and leaping so that he could barely make sense of them. Where was he? He remembered, with heart-stopping clarity, the touch of hard, cold fingers on his wrist, the grip of a skeletal hand, and a groaning,beckoning voice urging him to follow. And he'd followed, incap able of refusal. Then darkness, bitter as dead hope, covered him, filling him with dread and piercing fear.
Flint? Riana? With a dark and hopeless feeling he recalled Flint's words on the cliff: Those phantom raiders seemed to have little interest in Riana… they will have small enough interest in an old dwarf. Where are Riana and Flint? Dead? Dead. He heard his own groan of fear and knew, then, that he could speak.
"Who is that? Where are you?"
"Here, beside you." Karel's whispered laugh was sour. "If you could turn your head, you'd see me. As it is, you'll have to be content to stare at the ceiling, friend. Wait until he's deep into the spell again. Then try to move."
Light, splitting and dancing in all the colors of a rainbow, leaped before Tanis's eyes, arcing and splashing across the field of his vision. He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to shut out the needle-sharp pain. "Who are you?"
"Karel. Hush!"
"Daryn." The mage's word was thunder, rolling across the chamber, filling the air with danger. "Rise!"
Beside him, Tanis heard Karel gasp. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to move. The effort should have taken him to his feet. He was only able to turn onto his side. It was enough to allow him to see the whole chamber, and enough to let him shudder with horror at what he saw.
It was a small man who spoke those commands, and very old. He wore his years with little grace. They lay upon him like unholy burdens. His eyes blazed with his magic, his red robes swirled about him as he lifted his hand.
Crimson blood circled a weakly struggling young man. Daryn, Tanis thought, Riana's brother! The soft murmuring of the mage's chant rose and fell in tones that were sometimes coaxing, sometimes commanding.
Then, with jerky, heartless strength, Daryn staggered to his feet. His hands twitched, his legs threatened to buckle, then stiffened as his feet found their purchase upon the stone floor. Dried rosemary leaves rustled in the mage's hand. The fire in the brazier sighed. With a practiced flourish, he sent the dust of a powdered sapphire, blue and sparkling as a high autumn sky, leaping across the distance between him and the bloody circle. It paused in mid-air, an azure halo above Daryn's head, then settledgently, with great precision, inside the blood circle, to form an other border.