Imprisoned within Gadar's circles of magic, Daryn stood, his face drawn and white. In that moment, complete understanding rippled through him, carving at his face with the sharp tools of terror.
And in that moment, the door that Tanis could barely see across the wide chamber burst open with a splintering crash. Weird light broke along the finely honed blade of Flint's axe, leaping and dancing.
Karel's sob of fear when he saw Riana standing behind Flint might have been the voice of Daryn, standing mute and terrified in double circles of enchantment. Or it might have been the voice of Tanis's own dread. Gadar spun quickly, his eyes wild and filled with hatred and thwarted purpose. White light leaped from his fingers, deadly arrows of flame.
"Flint! Down!"
But Tanis's cry wasn't needed to send the old dwarf dodging and scrambling for cover, dragging Riana with him. Karel slapped his leg hard and shouted,
"Now! Up, friend, we can move!"
The mage screamed, a mountain cat's howl of rage, and turned on Tanis and Karel. Halfway to his feet, Tanis dropped again to the stone floor. White-hot arrows of light darted past his face, stinging and burning, filling the air with a sulphurous, acrid stink. Out of the corner of his eye, Tanis saw Karel bolt across the chamber to where Daryn hung, trapped, in the enchanted circle of blood.
Daryn moaned, and Karel, crouched outside the bloody circle, reached out his hand to his friend. He cried out in pain, flung back by the spitting, stinging force of Gadar's magic.
Riana screamed, and Tanis leaped for the mage, caught him around the knees and brought him crash-ihg to the floor. From some hidden place in his sleeve, Gadar found a knife. Its cold blade flashed once, then again in the dancing torchlight, raking along the back of Tanis's hand.
Hardly feeling the pain, Tanis flipped the mage onto his belly and dashed his knife hand against the floor. The steel blade hit stone and rang loudly. Tanis jerked first one hand, then the other tightly behind the mage's back and held him firmly with a knee in the small of his back.
Frightened, filled with terror and despair, Riana's moaning sobs came to the half-elf. A bitter oath in dwarven told him that Flint was unharmed.
"Let Daryn go, mage," Tanis ordered tightly. "It's over. Let him go."
Shuddering and gasping for breath, Gadar twisted his head to glare at his captor. His voice, as hard as ice and steel, was a grating snarl. "It is not over until the spell-caster declares it over. And do not think to try to free him from the magic's circle. Whoever crosses its borders now will not live an instant."
"There is no reason to hold him now. Let him go."
"No reason in your eyes, reason enough in mine." Gadar coughed and shuddered. For a moment Tanis thought he saw the old man's eyes dim, the black glitter of hatred awash with grief. "But even that may be gone now, vanished at last, despite all I have done." Grim purpose darkened the mage's face again. "No! I will fight to the end! Fight as I have always fought!"
Knowing that he must strike before Gadar could begin to work his magic, Tanis raised his fist. But Gadar was an old man! And tired, by the look of him. Old and weary, a dry, cracked voice whispered in his mind, and it will take only one blow, young man, only one if you choose to deal it out against so fragile an opponent. What strength have I against the hard hand of your youth? Weary age, ancient burdened grief filled the voice, and blurred images of pitiful but valiant striving coalesced into pictures in the half-elf's mind, as clear as though they were his living memories. In the wavering torchlight the shadow of his own fist seemed a black and evil thing. He is an old man!
Tanis relaxed his hold on the mage and started to release him. Then, as he turned his head, shamed by the thought of striking so helpless an opponent, he saw Gadar's lips move slowly, silently chanting the words of a deadly spell. His black eyes glittered like those of an ancient snake coiled to strike.
It took only one blow to still the mage. But as magic's rainbow light surged to life again, pulsing and throbbing in the air, Tanis knew he'd struck too late.
Karel hunched his shoulders, his head bowed intending to butt through the wall of Gadar's power.
"No!" Riana screamed.
"Karel!" It was not Riana who cried out then, but Daryn. Something of himself flickered in his eyes. He reached out his hand as though he would stop Karel where he crouched, ready to leap through the blood-etched circle. Daryn's eyes were black with fear, then finally, free of the puppet-master's influence of the mage's will, understanding. At last his own will animated his limbs. He staggered toward Karel, crashed into the pulsing wall of magic, and thrust his hand into the free air of the chamber.
"No, Karel!" His voice was hollow, echoing already with the abandoned agony of the phantoms who haunted the castle.
The chamber shrieked with thwarted power, magic set free of the channels Gadar had forced it into. Daryn grasped his friend's shoulder, shoved him hard, and sent him spinning to the floor.
Writhing in agony so hideous that he could force no sound from his gaping mouth, Daryn collapsed, twitching and hunching against the pain. Then, hissing and spitting, the rainbow lights faded, drifted aimlessly for a moment, and vanished.
There was no longer a life to capture within the enchanted circle.
In the stricken silence, surrounded by the thinning power and the dawning knowledge of the sacrifice Daryn had made, Tanis moved instinctively to Riana.
Stunned, she took a stumbling step toward the now-harmless circle where her brother lay. Tanis caught her back and guided her carefully to Karel. On his knees, his head bowed, Karel reached blindly for her hand.
"Why?" she asked, the question torn painfully from her weeping heart. "Why, Karel?"
Karel held her closely but did not reply. He looked up at Tanis as though to ask the same question. But Tanis had no answer. Behind him he heard the mage groan, stir, and then fall quiet. For all the sound of his own harsh breathing and Riana's weeping, the chamber seemed suddenly silent. The old mage no longer breathed.
There must be answers, but the mage was not going to give them now. Tanis wondered if he would have found them sufficient or even comprehensible had he been able to hear them.
What twisted purpose, he thought, his head aching with the wondering, would move a man to this warped use of magic?
An old man, his skin the color of parchment, his hands gnarled claws, crawling with thick, twisted veins. Age? Was that the thing the mage had thought to stave off with the life spirit of young Daryn? Had he been pirating the youth of others to keep himself alive? Disgust, empty even of pity, filled Tanis until his stomach knotted.
Wearily he turned, looking for Flint. He found the dwarf in the darkest comer of the chamber, kneeling beside a small, richly clothed bed. In that bed, covered with thick robes and blankets, lay a slim, frail boy.
For one long moment Tanis thought that the boy was dead. His breathing, so slight that it might have been the play of shadows across his chest, made no sound.
"Flint?"
The old dwarf shook his head. "He lives, but only barely."
The boy sighed, then opened his eyes, and Tanis felt an echoing throb of the pain that he saw there. It seemed an ancient pain, long suffered and too long denied. Then, for a moment, the eyes filled with pleading, darkened with fear.
"Father?"
"No," Tanis said, dropping to his knees beside the bed.
"Father, no more."
Tanis looked to Flint, who shook his head. The boy was so weak he could barely see, so weary he could not know that Tanis was not the father he spoke to. Aching pity filled Tanis then, and he took the boy's hand in his own.
"Be still now," he whispered.
But the boy tried weakly to lift his hand. "No. No more. Father. Please, I cannot. No more."