Элейн Каннингем - Thornhold

“Welcome, daughter of Samular,” intoned a faint, rusty voice.

Bronwyn whirled, startled by the unearthly sound, and found herself looking straight into glowing red eyes, set into a skeletal face.

She swallowed a scream and fell back. At second glance, she understood what manner of being she faced. Ancient, rusty robes hung in tatters about the lank form. Where flesh once had been, there was only bone wrapped in papery gray. Lank strings of white hair straggled out from beneath the cowl of a once-white cape. Yet there was life, of a sort, in those glowing red eyes. This was a lich, an undead wizard, and one of the most feared and powerful beings known.

The creature advanced. “Daughter of Samular,” it repeated. “You have little need to fear me. I have waited long for this day and for one such as you. The Fenrisbane—its time has come? You have come for it, and for the third ring?”

Because it seemed the thing to do, and because she was not certain her voice would serve her, Bronwyn nodded.

The lich darted forward with a skittering rattle. It seized Bronwyn’s arms with bony fingers, and tears of dust and mold leaked from its glowing eyes. “At last you have come! The wonders we will know, and the glory! Wait here.”

Bronwyn was released so abruptly that she almost fell. She rubbed her arms where the lich’s touch had chilled her. She watched, bemused, as the creature hobbled up the stairs that wound around the inside wall of the tower. Several minutes dragged by, and she was considering attempting a retreat when the lich reappeared, a small box in its skeletal hand. “The third ring,” it said reverently, and handed her the box.

Bronwyn opened it and slipped the ring onto her left hand as her father had done. As with the other, this one magically sized itself to her finger.

“What of the Fenrisbane?” she asked, remembering the name the lich had spoken, and assuming that this was the much-sought artifact.

“It is not here, of course. I had the siege engine hidden away for safe keeping years ago, much as one would hide a tree in a forest,” the lich said slyly. “It is in the attic of a toy and curiosity shop, in a remote town not too far from the monastery.”

Siege engine. In a toy shop. Bronwyn was beginning to understand what part the rings might have in this. “Why did you do this?” she asked. “I would think the Fenrisbane would be safer here.”

A bony finger waggled in admonition. “There is danger in having the rings and the tower in the same place. The four artifacts should be reunited only when there is a force gathered sufficient to use and to protect the artifacts.” The lich paused, tilted his head, and leaned forward in a menacing gesture. “You don’t have the other rings with you, do you?”

“I know where they are, but I do not have them with me,” she assured the lich. “One is in the hands of another child of Samular’s blood, a child who is protected by powerful magic. If threatened, she can magically flee within strong walls.” Some instinct prompted her not to mention Blackstaff Tower.

“Good. That is good. Your forebears have prepared you to wield the Fenrisbane in Samular’s name?”

There was a cunning note in the dry tone that Bronwyn mistrusted. The lich obviously sensed her heritage—perhaps this was a test of her knowledge and worthiness. She answered as truthfully as she could. “My father gave me the ring just before he died in an attack on his fortress. He would want me to use the Fenrisbane to right this wrong.”

The lich nodded avidly, shedding flakes of ancient skin in the process. “Good, good. You have two children of the bloodline, two who are agreed in how to use the rings. That is a needed thing—one person alone cannot fully awaken the Fenrisbane’s magic. Go now, and do.”

Bronwyn was only too glad to obey, but at the wall, she turned back. “The toy shop.”

“Gladestone,” the lich said impatiently. “An old town of elves with long lives and longer memories. Seek out Tintario or his heirs. There is a dweomer on these elves and their shop. They will never sell the Fenrisbane or close the shop. If the need to protect it arises, they will do so or die. See that you do likewise.”

She had one more question, one that she feared to ask. “Who are you? Or, if you prefer, who were you?”

The lich hesitated. Bronwyn got the impression that it was more saddened than aggrieved by this impertinence. “I no longer recall the name I once wore. What I was is lost. What I am now is the Guardian of the Order.” A dry, heavy sound wheezed from the lich, one that might have been a sigh had it come from a living throat. “This puts me in a paradoxical position. Paladins cannot abide undead and would destroy me on sight. For good or ill, few of the paladins and priests in yonder fortress knows who or what inhabits this ancient tower. They simply consider it a holy place and are restrained by their order’s edict from disturbing it.”

The lich shook itself, staving off despair as it must have done many times in its long years of undeath. “But now you have come. I entrust the third ring and the Fenrisbane into your care. This I do because you are of the bloodline of Samular, and because I cannot give these things to the paladins for whom they were intended.” The creature darted forward with startling speed and loomed threateningly over Bronwyn.

One bony hand parted the robe. A small black bat flew out from the empty ribcage. The lich paid it no heed, but slipped a tiny scrying globe from an inside pocket of the robe and showed it to her. “I will know what you do,” he said. “Fail, and I will seek you out.”

Cara and Ebenezer spent a pleasant day on the hillside. He taught her to spit for distance and how to hold a knife for whittling. She took to both with gusto and soon had a pile of wood shavings around her feet. Wood chips and toothpicks, the dwarf observed, pretty much average for a first-time whittler.

The girl pestered him for stories, as she had on the ship. Ebenezer had used up most of his best tales, but he didn’t mind telling the second-rate ones. They didn’t tell bad, once he added a bit of gloss and color. While he talked, he whittled away at a toy for her. An orc, she wanted, just like the ones in his stories.

Orcs were much on Ebenezer’s mind. He knew the signs better than he liked. The scuffling big-footed prints, scat that showed small game eaten raw and whole, and the fetid, musty smell that emanated from some of the hidden caves. There would be trouble, of that he was certain. Orcs always meant trouble.

But trouble, when it came, took a very different form. Cara’s soft, sharp intake of breath startled him. She seized his wrist and pointed. “There! See that white horse coming along with the gray dappled? That’s the man who stole me from my farm and chased me in the city.”

Ebenezer strained and squinted, but his eyes weren’t made for distance in the same way the sharp-sighted child’s were. He couldn’t make out the man, but oh, he knew that horse!

“More paladins,” he muttered. “And heading to the keep.”

He didn’t like this, not one little bit. His every instinct told him this put Bronwyn in a bad way. But how could he warn her?

Cara whistled sharply. A few feet away, Shopscat was tearing at the bones left from their breakfast of roast rabbit. The raven looked up at the sound and flew to the child’s shoulder. “We could send Shopscat to warn her,” she suggested.

Ebenezer pursed his lips and considered. “He’d know how?”

“He can fly. He can find her and bring her a message,” she said confidently. She suddenly bit her lip in consternation. “I don’t write very well yet. Can you write the note?”

He could, but not in Common. The sign on Bronwyn’s shop bore Dethek runes along with Common lettering and curling, sissy Elvish script. Ebenezer hoped she hadn’t needed to hire a dwarf scribe to write the Dethek for her. He took the stump end of charcoal pencil Cara handed him and scribbled a few runes on a scrap of parchment. “Guess it’s time to see if that dwarf what she boasted of taught her anything useful,” he muttered as he wrote the message.