Anthology - The Magic of Krynn

Tanis took her hand again and suddenly Flint sensed his friends thought as clearly as he could sense the frost on the night air.

He sat forward quickly to protest, but before he could speak, Tanis said, 'Then you won't go alone, Riana."

The girl's eyes lighted, her lips parted in a genuine smile of surprise and hope. "You'll help me?"

"I will."

Flint watched through narrowed eyes while Riana and Tanis talked together for a short time longer. He made no effort to join their conversation, but sat, brooding before the fire. When Riana, tired at last, bade him goodnight, he answered with only a short nod.

Once the girl was well settled and sleeping, wrapped in Tanis's blanket, Flint sat forward, still grimly silent.

But Tanis did not speak. Long experience had taught him that the best defense against Flint's disapproval was silence. Faced with no argument against which to vent his objections, Flint would, sooner or later, find a way to challenge Tanis's silence. With studied care, Tanis checked the fire and took up the arrows he'd used to bring down the hares. The green and gold fletching that marked them as his own was damaged. Tanis worked over them quietly until Flint at last spoke.

"Well?"

Tanis looked up from his work. "Well?"

"It's late to play word games, Tanis," Flint growled. "What made you offer to take up this foolishness?"

"What are we supposed to do, leave her here?"

"We could escort her to Solace."

"She won't go."

"How do you know that? You didn't press very hard."

Tanis smoothed the stiff feathers of one of the arrows. "It seems clear enough to me."

"What seems clear to me is that you've committed yourself to a hopeless task. Tanis, we don't even know what truth there is in the girl's story. Ghosts? Bandits, I might believe. But phantoms wholaugh at cold steel?" The old dwarf shook his head. "The girl is ei ther lying or a lack-wit."

"No, Flint. She's neither."

"You're so sure?"

Tanis wasn't completely certain. He only knew that her determination to go on, to find her brother and their friend, was real. Her eyes had glittered with it, her words held the passion of one who would not be gainsaid. And, too, though he could point to nothing that supported his feeling, Tanis was certain that the girl spoke the truth. He shook his head. At least the truth as she believed it.

"I'm sure, though I can't say why. Flint, the girl is terrified. There is something wrong in this forest. We've both felt it. And still she'll go on, with or without anyone's help. I can't let her go alone."

"I'll not deny that there is an evil feel to this place. I can almost smell it, and it grows stronger every day we journey north. Lad, you're not too old to be reckless, but I am."

Tanis looked from his old friend to Riana, sleeping quietly, one hand pillowing her head, the other fisted as though she clutched her courage even in sleep. Whatever doubts could be had about her story, he knew that she would go on, if she had to, without his help. And likely she would come to quick grief. He couldn't let that happen.

"Flint, I haven't committed you. I don't want to go alone. But I will if I have to."

Smoke drifted up from the fire, a thin veil between them. Even so, Flint could see the regret in his friend's eyes. Despite his words, he knew there was no decision to be made. "No, I noticed you were careful not to do that. Though I wonder that you'd think I would let you go alone." He reached for the arrows Tanis had abandoned. "Here, you'll lose these to the flame if you're not careful."

"Then you'll come with me?"

The wind whispered evil secrets to the night. The groaning of the trees under the frost might have been the mourning of lost souls. Flint shuddered, remembering the girl's tale of phantoms and ghosts. "I still have little enough faith in the girl's story of ghosts. But it's clear to me that the two of you will need someone with sense along on this fool's errand."

Tanis thanked him gravely, knowing that it would not do now to smile.

On the black stone parapet of his castle, the old mage Gadar turned his face up to a cold sky. Lunitari's red light leaked from behind the clenched fists of crimson clouds. Shadows drifted across the ground. Like dark breaths they twined around the gray trunks of stiffly ranked pines and slid down the mountain's slopes. A night-hawk, talons flashing in the moon's rising light, dropped from her nest: she was an arrow irrevocably launched toward her prey. The rabbit screamed, its first and last voicing, a brief song of the life it had lived and protest of death's agony.

Behind the mage, in a chamber red with the flame of torch and hearth, a raven cawed as though to warn him that time was passing. Gadar turned his back on the mountains and returned to the chamber.

The raven croaked again, cocked its head specula-lively, and preened its wings.

"I know," Gadar murmured wearily. "They could be trouble. But they will be dealt with."

The preening stopped then. The raven tilted its head back toward the long table standing before the hearth and eyed with deep mistrust the wooden coffer that lay in its center. Made of finely polished rosewood, hinged and latched with silver, the chest was the one thing that reflected no light from the fire.

"Yes, yes, my friend, you'd best leave while you can."

The bird did not hesitate. It lifted with awkward striving and cleared the window, drifting out into the frost-nipped night.

Alone again, Gadar took up the coffer. With careful movements he released the delicately crafted silver latch and closed his eyes. The words of the summoning spell came quickly, filling him with the power and demanding of him the strength of will needed to direct what it was he summoned.

KNOW WHO CALLS YOU:

He lifted the lid of the coffer, hardly feeling the silky wood beneath his fingers, not aware of the soundless swing of the hinges. He opened his eyes, dropped his gaze to the rich amber velvet cushioning the treasure housed within. Cool and bright, silver chased with gold, the four bejeweled sword hilts lay, each touching the other to form a cross.

KNOW WHO GUIDES YOU:

The fire in the hearth leaped, dancing high and roaring with the hollow voices of unhoused spirits. A wind, cold as though it had swept across glaciers, moaned through the room.

KNOW WHO SENDS YOU:

Black as night, insubstantial as the smoke of a funeral pyre, the four phantoms formed before the mage. Their bodies were only shades of what they had once been, living men. Their eyes were red as the flame in the hearth, their hearts as empty as winter's wind.

"Where?" the darkest one, the longest dead, asked.

"A day's journey from here. You should be able to reach them before dawn. A girl, a dwarf, and a half-elf."

"Bring them?"

Gadar hesitated.

The phantom laughed, and the hair shivered along the mage's arms. The spirits were his to control, but he feared them nonetheless. Still, he feared more any interference in his plans. He could not allow himself to be stopped now. Tomorrow was the night when the spell must be cast; tonight the night when one must be chosen from the two young men who waited in his dungeons. He must set these four phantoms prowling again. It must be certain that nothing could occur to thwart the spell.

"Stop them."

"It is done," the leader whispered.

And it was, Gadar thought as he watched the incorporeal bodies of the spirits thin and fade. It was done. These creatures had never failed to serve him before. They would not fail now.