David Grace - The Accidental Magician

"How could I do such a thing? It is certain death."

"This is far more important than the life or death of any one person. All our lives are hostage to Hazar's plans."

"Well, it is not more important to me than my life, because it is the only one I am going to have. I've risked my skin enough times with Hazar and his deacons. Now someone else can fight this battle. I'm going home to my uncle's manor while I'm still in one piece. If you want the ring you are welcome to it."

"Can't you understand? It will not work for me. It will not even work for another human until he has been accustomed to it. You have worn it long enough now. You can use it. Even if we had someone else he would never become attuned to its forces in time."

"Buster, I want to thank you for saving my life, if in fact we get out of here alive, but I'm not going to put my neck back into the noose after escaping from this trap. You'll just have to think of another way to thwart Hazar's plans."

"There is no other way! We have risked everything to rescue you so that you can use the power of the ring against Hazar. It was on this basis alone that the decision makers authorized the attack. If you abandon us now, Hazar will slay half the tribe."

"Ever since I put on this ring I've been forced to do others' bidding. My uncle tried to cut off my hand. Bandits pursued me. Black sorcerers threw me into their dungeons, and now the Grays expect me to give up my life in a crusade of their own. Well, no more! Mara, if you please."

Buster looked on with frustrated impotence as Grantin motioned for Mara to commence the spell.

Reluctantly she held the ring with the tip of her thumb, index finger, and middle finger of her right hand and recited the incantation. With a gentle tug she freed the bloodstone. For a moment she looked at it strangely, then handed it back to Grantin, who, with no better use for it, dropped it into his pocket.

Buster's face was grim. With the removal of the ring all his plans were shattered. Grantin turned and saw that the last of the crates had been moved out of the way. Chom and Castor pulled the loosened stones from the floor. Mara wandered across the room to the window and idly stared out, searching the dawn-lighted street beyond. At the far right-hand edge of her vision a shape moved, then another, then another still. A squad of three soldiers came into view, then turned toward a door set into the outer wall on the far side of the street. The search for the fugitives had begun. Mara stood frozen for a moment, hypnotized by the spectacle, then turned back to the others.

"Soldiers!" she whispered. "They're making a door-to-door search. They're across the street now. They will be here in a minute or two. They will see the crates have been moved and find the passageway."

"Is there some way to stop them? Is there anything that we can do?" Grantin asked.

Mara put her arms around Grantin and stared solemnly into his face.

"Do you really believe what you said, about my mother lying to me, and about my father?"

"Mara, this is no time to-"

"-Because if you are right, then I do not belong here with the Gogols. I am really a Hartford and I should be doing everything I can to save my people."

Mara abruptly released Grantin and stepped over to the door.

"What are you doing?"

"I have a plan, another diversion. Go ahead without me. You must escape to thwart Hazar's plans."

Before anyone could move, Mara opened the panel and slipped outside.

"She will need some help," Buster announced as he limped toward the door.

"Buster, come back," Grantin hissed.

"It makes no difference. If you don't put on the ring and defeat Hazar, my people are lost in any event."

"Buster, come back! We can still escape through the tunnel."

"No," Buster said over his shoulder as he slipped out the door. "I do not wish to outlive my race."

Buster disappeared through the door and closed the panel from the outside. Chom and Castor redoubled their efforts to free the trapdoor. Grantin ignored them and hurried to the window. Outside, Mara crossed the street, putting distance between herself and the storeroom. Of Buster Grantin could see no sign.

Mara ducked past the doorway into which the soldiers had been recently admitted, then turned around and began walking back. She halted fifteen yards beyond the door and waited for the guards to reemerge. A few moments later the first soldier reappeared and Mara ran down the center of the street in full view of the guards. The first one leaped after her. In an instant a second soldier followed. She struggled in their grasp. An officer appeared but stood well back from the skirmish. He eyed Mara and searched the street in the direction from which she had come. In a flash of inspiration the officer looked across the First Circle directly at the barred window from which Grantin now observed the fight.

The officer turned and walked purposefully toward the storeroom door. He was halfway across the street when a bundle of fur darted from the shadows and collided with his marching form. Buster could not hope to reach the soldier's throat. As he charged he held the knife high in his right hand and aimed for the officer's stomach. But the Ajaj was tired and lame and the soldier keyed to a sharpness of senses and acute reaction.

The officer drew his own knife. The blade pierced Buster's torso even before the Gray reached him. It was only through his momentum that the Ajaj succeeded in reaching the guard. With his dying hand Buster planted his dagger deep in the officer's stomach.

Both fell to the dusty pavement, Buster dead and the soldier already losing consciousness. The guards saw what had happened to their commander and, convinced that the fugitives had avoided their initial search, dragged Mara back up the First Circle toward Hazar's quarters.

A groaning creak sounded behind Grantin. He turned to see Chom lift the iron door. Almost in a state of shock he stumbled forward and, gripped by the Fanist's four strong arms, felt himself being lowered into the darkness.

Inside the cavern a dim luminescence was generated by lichen-encrusted walls. While the radiation was too feeble to illuminate the features of the cavern, it did mark the twistings and turnings of the walls on which it grew. As the one most comfortable in cave-like surroundings. Castor led the way, then came Grantin, then Chom.

In the caverns hearing was an unreliable sight. Grantin found himself struggling to ignore the scrapes and rattles which reached his ears. Ahead of them he fantasized spiders and poisonous snakes, while from behind he feared attack from the pursuing Gogols. Each of Chom's footfalls, the rattle of pebbles, the scrape of arms or hips against protruding limestone walls, all echoed and reverberated. Whispers were amplified and returned to terrify the travelers. Neither the direction, origin, nor cause of the echoes could be discerned, and so the fugitives tramped onward blind to the terrors which pursued or awaited them.

Grantin's original plan had seemed straightforward and definite: reach Cicero, find Mara, remove the ring, and return to the good graces of Uncle Greyhorn. Now his life bumped ahead aimlessly. His schemes had lost their anchor and his mind was filled with conflicts which he found impossible to reconcile. Mara was captured; what would happen to her? And didn't he still owe his uncle something, the loyalty of blood to blood if nothing else? But wasn't Greyhorn lost beyond all hope? What about Buster's bloody end? Didn't he have some kind of obligation to the old Gray? Yet, dead is dead and nothing could change that.

Grantin suppressed all these disturbing questions and sought to focus on the details of their passage. Slowly the character of the darkness changed. Ahead the air became suffused with a thin gray light which gradually grew brighter as the fugitives wound their way through a series of twists and turns. At last, a glowing clot of whitish gray burned through the center of a velvet screen. The rent in the darkness expanded until the fugitives found themselves standing at a brush-encrusted exit. With reluctant curiosity they advanced and studied the scenery beyond.