“I’ve no idea. I mean it’s the right place, sure enough, but I can’t locate a cave,” He shook his head. “I’ve been scrying and there’s nothing, nothing at all.”
“There’s something preventing me from searching beneath the surface on the far side of that ravine,” Usara looked thoughtful. “That must mean something.”
“Parrail?” I turned to the young scholar who clutched a parchment defensively to his chest, eyes wide.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I’m sorry but I can’t find anything out of the ordinary.”
“Which is what we’d expect if this place was supposed to be shielded from aetheric magic,” Livak managed to damp down most of the scorn in her voice. “Let’s follow Usara’s lead. Buril and Tavie, you’re with us.”
It seemed Halice’s word was good enough to give Livak a measure of authority over the mercenaries and the two she named climbed down readily into the ship’s boat, the rest remaining alert and guarding the ship. I followed more slowly, my feelings increasingly confused, reluctant to risk making contact with this ancient magic, desperate to rid myself of Temar and constantly struggling to keep him from laying his shadowy presence over my eyes and my hands. I was starting to feel quite light-headed as we reached a rocky ledge, where a stunted tree offered a handy place to tie up. The feeling worsened as my feet made contact with the ground and with every step we took up that narrow ravine, my senses reeling as the jagged walls of the defile seemed to be pressing in on me, frozen in time but ready to topple down on me at any moment.
“It’s no good, I can’t find any kind of entrance to a cave,” said Usara with marked irritation.
“There’s no sign along here,” called one of the mercenaries, a bull-necked man with blunt features marred by a thoroughly broken nose. “Nor here,” confirmed his mate, Tavie, I think it was, a burly bruiser with a gut on him like a two-season child-belly.
Livak looked down from where she was exploring a narrow ledge, sure-footed as a mountain goat. “This all looks as if it’s been undisturbed since Misaen made it,” she commented. “Shiv?”
“What?” the wizard looked up from a puddle in a rocky hollow where he had been working magic. “No, there’s nothing I can see that’s of any use.” He turned to me, face deathly serious. “The only one who’s going to be able to find that cave is Temar D’Alsennin.”
My first instinct was to reach for my sword but I managed to stick my hands through my belt instead. “What do you mean?”
“You have to let Temar show us the way,” Usara folded his arms. “It’s the only way, Ryshad.”
I shook my head slowly, wanting to shout my denial but unable to find the words. Livak slid down a convenient tree and reached up to lay her hands on either side of my face, drawing my gaze to her.
“Look at me, Rysh,” she said softly. “Arimelin save us, I don’t want to see this again, but finding this cave is the only way you’re going to be rid of him, isn’t it? Saedrin’s stones, I know what we’re asking of you, better than anyone else, but you have to do this, to save yourself.”
She was right, curse her, curse the day Messire had ever given me this unholy sword. What choice did I have? Death? If I could leave this Temar D’Alsennin behind to make his own deal with Saedrin, would it be so very bad to cross over to the Otherworld and see what a new life there had to offer? I was so tired, so very tired, exhausted by the now incessant struggle to keep myself intact, to maintain my crumbling defenses against Temar. I was not even sure I even knew myself anymore, so much had changed in me over the seasons. Could I trust myself? Not really, but one thing I knew—I could trust Livak. I reached up with one trembling hand to bring her slim fingers to my lips in a bone-dry kiss. Shutting my eyes, I laid the other hand to the sword-hilt and lost myself in a bottomless pit of darkness.
The mining settlement of Kel Ar’Ayen,
43rd of Aft-Summer
Temar blinked and stumbled, disconcerted to find himself standing upright and putting out a hand to save himself by grabbing a tree branch. How was it that he had woken up here? Or was this just one more of the tormenting dreams that the enchantment had wrapped around him, only to rip away the illusion of normality to leave him alone in the dark once more?
No, this was real; it was daylight. He could feel the uneven rocks beneath his feet, wet leaves in his clutching hand, warm sun on his back. He could smell the green freshness of the flowers and bushes all around and he drew a deep breath of the warm, moist air down into his lungs. This was real, no vision of a forbidden reality to tempt him into madness. That first exultation of sensation faded to be replaced by a lurking headache and treacherous weakness in his limbs. Had he been ill, he wondered, vaguely recalling childhood fever. No, better not to think of that, of the way he had woken from delirium to find father and siblings lost to him forever, never to know each other again, even if they should meet by chance in the Otherworld.
A voice spoke hesitantly beside him and Temar frowned, unable to make sense of the rapid, oddly phrased sentence. Who was this man? Obviously he was from some distant land with a different tongue. He looked to be ten or so years older than Temar, somewhat taller with long black hair and a sallow complexion. He was dressed in curiously cut and tailored clothes, a blood-stained bandage grimy beneath the tattered remnants of what had once been a good linen shirt of leaf green.
“Temar D’Alsennin?” the man tried again, slowly. While the accent remained hard on the ear, Temar could at least recognize his own name. He nodded, cautiously and asked his own most immediate question. “Who are you?”
The man frowned then tapped himself on the chest, speaking slowly. “Shiv.”
Temar did not think that much of a reply and wondered why the foreigner was looking so uneasy. He closed his eyes for a moment and ran rapidly through his memories, ruthlessly shoving aside the chaos of his dreams in a desperate search for his last moments before the enchantment had taken his wits from him. That was it, he had been sent into a sleep woven of Artifice to remain safe until rescue could come. Eyes snapping open, Temar took a step toward the man in green, clear challenge in his words.
“How do I come to be here?”
The man shrugged helplessly and looked past Temar to someone at his back. Angry at himself for allowing them to take him unawares like this, Temar swung rapidly around to find himself outnumbered and took a pace sideways to get the solid rock of the gorge to defend his back.
“We are here to help you,” a lad some few years younger than Temar spoke up, snub-nosed face pale with tension beneath a thatch of coarse brown hair, a small book in one hand, crammed with odd notes and scraps of parchment. “My name is Parrail and I have some knowledge of enchantment.” His words were spoken with painstaking care and his sincerity was evident. “What you know as Artifice,” he added hastily.
That was all very well, but Temar was more concerned about the other people he could see. Two men, guardsmen by his guess, were further up the gorge, looking at him with frank curiosity, while a tempting blossom with tousled red hair was standing rather closer, arms folded and an expression close to hatred burning in her grass green eyes. Temar found himself recoiling from this a little, unable to think how he might have offended the lady, though her claim to such a courtesy looked rather doubtful, given her immodest breeches and manlike jerkin. The last member of this band of brigands was a quiet man of no more than usual height with thinning sandy hair and shrewd eyes, dressed in some kind of long robe with no weapons that Temar could see. Was he a priest of some kind? Temar looked around again and realized with some relief that only the retainers and the woman looked to be carrying weapons. If it came to a fight, the runes were not too heavily weighted against him.