Rick Cook - Wizard’s Bane

"Granted willingly." Shiara swept into the hall, moving unerringly to them. "So you have not heard my story, Sparrow?"

"No, Lady. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk about you behind your back."

"There is no need to be sorry." Her mouth quirked up at the corner. "The bards sing the tale in every tavern in the North, I understand. The price of fame is having your story told over and over by strangers."

"I’m sorry," Wiz said again.

"Perhaps you would like to hear the story as it happened?"

"We do not wish to pain you, Lady." Moira said.

Shiara chuckled, a harsh, brittle sound. "My child, the pain is in the loss. There is little enough ain in the telling." She seated herself in her chair by the fireplace. "Sometimes it even helps to repeat it."

Moira sat down on the bench. "Then yes, Lady, we would like to hear the story, if you do not mind."

"I’ve never heard it, Lady," Wiz said, sitting down as close to Moira as he could without being too obvious about it. Moira shifted slightly but did not get up.

"Well then," Shiara smoothed out the folds in her skirt and settled back. "We were powerful in those days," she said reminiscently. "My hair was white even then and Cormac, ah, Cormac’s hair was as yellow as fine gold."

"And he was strong," Moira put in breathlessly. "The strongest man who ever lived and the best, bravest swordsman in all the North."

"Not as strong as the storytellers say," Shiara said. "But yes, he was strong."

"And handsome? As handsome as they say?"

Shiara smiled. "No one could be that handsome. But he was handsome. I called him my sun, you know."

Ugo entered unnoticed with a bundle of wood and set about kindling a fire.

Shiara sensed the boy and girl looking up at her. Young, Shiara thought, so very young. Convinced the world is full of hope and possibilities and so blind to the truth. She felt the warmth of the fire on her face and turned her head to spread the heat. Then she sighed and began the old, old tale.

"Once upon a time, there was a thief who loved a rogue…"

Cormac, tall and strong with his corn-ripe hair caught back by a simple leather filet. He had doffed his leather breeks and linen shirt and stood only in his loin cloth. The fire turned his tan skin ruddy and highlighted the planes and hollows of his muscles. The scars stood out vividly on his torso and legs.

"Well, Light. Do we know what the thing is?"

Shiara shook her head and the motion made her tresses ripple. The highlights in her hair danced from the flames and the motion.

"Only that it is powerful—and evil. An evil that can shake the World."

"Mmmfph," Cormac grunted and turned back to his sword. Again he checked the leather cords on the hilt, running his fingers over them for any sign of looseness or slickness that might make the sword slip in his hand. "And it lies above us, you say?"

Shiara nodded. "In a cave well above the tree line this thing sleeps." She bit her lip. "It sleeps uneasily and I do not like to think what it might become when it awakens."

"And we must either possess it or destroy it." He shook his head. "It’s an awful way to make a living, Light."

"Terrible for two such honest tradesfolk," she agreed, falling into the well-worn game.

The thief had been very, very good. With skill, cunning, carefully arrayed magic and a good element of luck he had managed to penetrate the crypt beneath the Capital where the most dangerous treasures of the Council were stored.

In the end it had not been the Council that had caught him. When the vault’s magic detectors screamed and guards and wizards came rushing to investigate, they found the thief already dead, his throat torn out by the guardian the original owner had set upon the thing he had come to steal.

The object of the daring raid had been a chest imprisoning a demon of the sixth order, a thing powerful enough but not so unusual as to attract the close scrutiny of the Mighty The real treasure was in the hidden drawer in the bottom of the chest. What the compartment contained was well worth scrutiny.

"I had heard of the thieving of course," Cormac told her as they toiled up the steep trail toward the foreboding summit, "but I had not known what was in the compartment."

"A parchment," Shiara said. "A map and a note that a very old and very great treasure of magic lay somewhere in a cave near the top of this mountain."

"So we come hotfoot deep into the Wild Wood to stir up something which has lain undisturbed for aeon and on," Cormac said. "Better, I think, to leave it lie. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof, Light."

Shiara smiled thinly. "This evil’s day has come it seems. Someone knew of the map and we have strong reason to believe that that someone now knows at least generally what the map had to say. We think someone was looking through the eyes of our thief when he died."

Cormac grunted. "So it is a race then." He looked up at the summit with its wreath of grey-black clouds.

"A race," Shiara agreed. "Although we may have lost already."

"You sense something?"

"No, but I can use my head as well as my magic. Whoever sent that thief had more time to prepare than we did. If the League knew generally what was on that parchment they could easily have been ready to move."

"So that is why we were sent upon the Wizard’s Way. I mislike this, Light. If the League are ahead of us it means a meeting battle. Those are always chancy and I have the feeling we would be outnumbered."

"I doubt any of the factions of the League Council would be left out of such an enterprise, so I cannot argue with you. But what would you? There were no others in the Capital fit for such a mission and we dared not delay." She looked up the trail. "We can only hope we are in time."

As they worked their way up the steep slopes the forest changed around them. The great oaks and beeches gave way to pine and firs and thick green rhododendrons. Here and there outcrops of dark rock poked through the thinning soil, more and more of it as they climbed.

The air changed about them as well, growing cooler and dank with the glacier’s breath. There was a dampness in the air that hinted fog and even in full daylight the mists moved the horizons closer. The mountain loomed over them and they had to crane their necks further and further back to see the snow-clad summit.

They were almost to the treeline when Cormac pulled even with Shiara and spoke quietly in her ear. "We’re being followed I think."

Not by look or action did Shiara show she had heard. "How many?"

Cormac shook his head. "Not many. Not creatures born to the woods either."

"The League? The ones who set the thief?"

"Possibly."

Shiara stopped and closed her eyes. With intangible eyes and ears she searched for signs of magic about them. She did not dare risk active magic so close to something so powerful.

"Ahhh," she breathed at last. "The League indeed. But one man only. Luck may be with us, my Sun. I think this is a private quest, not an expedition sent by the League Council."

"You know this man?"

"He is called Toth-Ra, a minor wizard."

"Is he dangerous?"

"Like an adder. Small and puffed with malice."

"And we seek a dragon yonder." Cormac jerked his head toward the snow-covered heights. "Well, Light, what say you?"

"I say leave him for now. He cannot do us much harm and I will need everything I have for lies above."

Well behind the pair Toth-Ra toiled up the slope. He puffed as he came and stopped to rest frequently both because he was unused to exertion and because he did not want to tread too closely on the heels of the two Northerners ahead of him.

A pretty train this, he thought, like ants following a scent trail.