He laid a hand to his own hip, reassured by the familiar feel of his own sword and glanced down instinctively. What he saw chilled him to the bone. This was not his hand; it was older, broader, tanned with oil ingrained around the nails, small scars pale in a lattice around the knuckles, a hard-worked hand with its fellow matching it. Temar spread both hands before him, unable to stop them shaking, mouth agape in consternation. These were an artisan’s hands, no noble bloodline bore these sturdy workmanlike fingers. The great sapphire that had been his father’s was gone too, but a deep indentation marked the flesh of the central finger, for all the world like the mark from the band of a ring.
Was this madness? Had he finally succumbed to the insanity that had tormented him through the smothering darkness of the enchantment? Terror threatened to overwhelm him. Stumbling, he fell to his knees, heedless of the pain of the sharp rocks. The scene before him shifted and altered, everything distorted as if he were looking through cheap and flawed glass.
“Come on,” the man called Shiv caught him under the arms and helped him stand. Temar’s vision cleared but his confusion grew as he realized he now stood taller than this man, not shorter. He looked down to see long, muscular legs encased in stained leather breeches running down to boots far wider and longer than they should have been. Temar was certain he had never owned such garments or footwear. What had happened to him?
The scribe or whatever he was hurried to Temar’s other side. “You are under an enchantment, a sorcery, laid upon you by the Lady Guinalle. We are here to restore you and your fellows if we can only find the cavern where you are hidden.”
Guinalle! All Temar’s alarm for himself receded as he picked that name out of the man’s slow words. He clung to the thought. Guinalle—she would help him, she would know why he was so fearfully transformed, she could answer all the questions that were crowding around him, threatening, taunting.
“Where is Guinalle?” The man with the bandage seemed almost to be hearing his thoughts.
Temar shook off his hands and scowled, sensation returning to his nerveless hands and feet. “What do you want with her?”
“We wish to restore her to herself, to awaken her,” the lad with the parchments said hesitantly.
“We need her aid to defend ourselves against invaders from the sea,” the thoughtful man in brown spoke up, picking his halting words with evident care, his accent still strange to Temar’s ear. The red-headed girl said something fast and furious that escaped Temar completely, her speech an incomprehensible gabble.
The lad rummaged in a pocket and held out a ring to Temar, a tarnished and battered circle of bronze whose engraved crest was worn to little more than a shadow. It was the crest of Den Rannion’s house, the ring a retainer would wear to show his allegiance and status.
“Vahil!” Memory came hurrying back to Temar and a frail hope reached past the taunts of delusion. “Vahil returned home? He has sent you?”
The one called Parrail hesitated, but the two unarmed men answered as one: “He has.”
“To seek your help against the men from the sea.”
Sudden recollection of the invaders’ assault shook Temar. “They are here?”
“Not yet, but they are coming,” replied the man in green.
“We need to find the cavern before they arrive,” added the man in brown, hushing the lad, who was looking more and more confused.
Temar shut his eyes for a moment and rubbed a hand over his aching head, stopping in consternation to feel a mass of short curls. That should tell him something, he knew, but what?
“What has happened to me?” he asked, more in anguish than in any hope of answer.
The redhead spat something at him but the man in green snapped back at her in words too rapid and oddly spoken for Temar to understand.
“Guinalle will be able to restore you.” The brown-robed man took a step forward and offered a pale-skinned hand. “We mean no harm to any of you. We only wish to help.”
Temar reached out one trembling, unfamiliar hand and clutched the man’s thin fingers. Contact with another living being steadied him; this was certainly no dream, no delusion wrought of fear and tangled memory.
“Where is Guinalle?” the man asked, eyes intent despite his friendly expression.
She would have the answers, Temar realized at once. Guinalle would know what to do; she might even know these people, whomever it was that Vahil had sent, from whatever distant land. He had to find Guinalle!
Turning, he surveyed the gorge, dismayed to find it narrower and deeper, the bottom choked with stones and clinging ferns as the foaming water splashed and bubbled its way through to the river. Was this the right place? Low oaks clung grimly to crevices in the rocks, twisted branches reaching upwards to the light. Finer branches of ash and hazel dappled the ground with shifting shadow. Winter storms must have sent landslides or floods or something to reshape the land so drastically, Temar concluded desperately. Struggling along the treacherous stream bed with no little difficulty, he scanned the sides of the defile frantically for any sign of the cavern’s entrance. Chest heaving with burgeoning panic, Temar halted, turning abruptly to see these strange visitors watching him, waiting, expressions wary.
“Search, curse you,” he shouted, suddenly enraged. “Help me!”
“What do we seek?” the lad Parrail called after an awkward moment of still silence.
“A narrow ledge, leading to rock-cut steps, a walk down into a small cave that gives onto a larger.” Temar looked around helplessly. “I cannot tell where it might be.”
“Think of Guinalle,” the wounded man urged as he made his way through the jumble of broken rock. “Let your instincts lead you to her.”
As the man spoke Temar felt an irresistible conviction that Guinalle was somewhere close. He turned and turned again, head going from side to side like a hound searching for a windblown scent. Moving rapidly, eyes unseeing, he let this unfamiliar body stumble through the chattering stream until he was brought up hard against the treacherous surface of a long, sliding scree of shattered rock. Blinking through blurred vision, temples throbbing, Temar looked up to see a familiar series of hills far distant, sharp profiles against the clear blue sky, backdrop to the raw and broken stones blocking the entrance to the cavern.
“She’s here,” Temar said helplessly.
The red-headed girl moved quickly along the narrow and treacherous ledges, hands and feet deft as she moved out on to the shifting surface of the scree. One of the swordsmen tried to follow her, lost his footing, tumbled and gained only scrapes and bruises for his trouble. The girl spat what could only be curses at him and he colored uncomfortably, turning to quench his hurts in the cool waters of the stream. The girl moved slowly up the long slope, everyone else watching in a tense silence broken only by the skittering of loose stones dislodged by her careful movements. Pausing, she wedged her feet securely against some larger stones and looked down, calling the first thing Temar had understood from her.
“Mind your heads!”
She began tossing stones down into the water, ringing splashes echoing down the rocky angles of the gorge. Soon a black patch of darkness showed against the gray of the rock face, a hole in the side of the hidden valley.
“Be careful, Livak!” the one called Shiv yelled as the redhead swung her legs slowly around and eased herself through the narrow gap. Temar stood, looking upwards along with all the rest, silent while the sounds of the chattering stream, the woodland birds singing all around, went unheeded.
“Yes! It’s here!” The girl Livak’s face reappeared in the breach, pale but triumphant, her voice somehow easier now on Temar’s ear.
“Get yourself out of the way and I’ll clear the entrance!” The man in brown robes shouted upwards, rolling his sleeves up in a purposeful fashion. The girl nodded and scrambled with some alacrity to a ledge above the opening.