Роджер Мур - The Reign of Istar

“You don’t recognize me, Akar?” came the soft, whispering voice. “Are you sure?”

“How can I if you do not remove your hood and let me see your face?” demanded Akar impatiently. “Be swift. My time. Is short.”

“My face is not known to you. But this, I believe, is.”

The strange mage lifted an object in his hand and held it forth to be illuminated by Nuitari’s dark light. Akar saw it, recognized it, felt the chill hand of fear close around his heart.

In a thin and wasted hand—a hand that seemed, to Akar, to gleam with a golden light, as if the skin had a strange gold cast to it—the mage held a silver pendant, a bloodstone.

Akar knew that pendant. Often he’d seen it hanging around the neck of his teacher, one of the greatest, most powerful wizards who had ever lived—and one of the most evil. Akar had heard the whispered rumors about that bloodstone, how the ancient wizard used it to suck life out of an apprentice, infuse his own powerful life into a new, younger body. Akar had never believed the rumors, never believed them until now.

“Fistandantilus!” he cried in recognition, and fumbled for the spell components with fingers gone numb while his brain fumbled for words that eluded his grasp.

A jagged bolt of lightning streaked through the night, struck Akar’s left hand. The jolt knocked the dagger from the wizard’s grasp, flung him backward, momentarily dazed.

Nicholas made a feeble effort to try to escape. Crawling on his hands and knees, he dragged his suffering, tortured body out of the ghastly light. He reached the edge of the stairs, tried to crawl down, slipped in a pool of his own blood, and plummeted down the steps. His death-shadowed eyes sought and found his sister. He stretched his hand out to her.

She dropped her sword, tried to clasp him, but the magical barrier kept them apart.

From behind them, out of the darkness, came the urgent command, “Pick up the dagger!”

Michael heard Raistlin’s command, remembered the mage’s instructions.

When the dagger falls, pick it up!

“But how can I?” Michael cried. “How can I cross the barrier?”

The cleric had been attempting to keep Nikol from injuring herself, flinging herself again and again into the magical wall that kept her from her brother. Her hands were burned and blistered, yet, even now, she ignored the pain, trying her best to reach Nicholas, though every time she did so, a cascade of sparks burst around her.

Michael looked past her, looked past the tortured Nicholas, and saw the dagger that lay gleaming on the citadel steps, near the bridge. The black-robed wizard who had wielded it, who sought to bring into the world the dark clerics that shouted and gibbered from the other side, was recovering from his shock, was starting to look around and take stock of his situation. He was much closer to the dagger than Michael.

“You can enter, fool cleric!” Raistlin cried. The words were his last, however, tearing the breath from his body. The spell he had cast had weakened him. A violent fit of coughing brought him to his knees, near where Nikol stood.

Akar saw his enemy falter. His eyes glinted. He lurched to his feet.

Michael grasped his holy medallion, the medallion that was dark and lifeless, and plunged forward, gritting his teeth against what he knew must be a surge of magic that would most likely kill him.

To his amazement, nothing happened. The barrier parted. He ran up the stairs and plunged forward to snatch the dagger from beneath Akar’s clutching fingertips. The mage’s chill touch brushed the cleric’s skin. Michael shrank from the horrible feel and the sight of the burning enmity in the black eyes, but he had the dagger.

Clasping the weapon in his hand, hardly knowing what he was doing, only wanting to escape the wizard, Michael stumbled back down the stairs.

At the bottom lay Nicholas. Michael looked down at the pain-twisted face, lost his fear in his compassion for the young man’s suffering, his admiration for his courage. He knelt, lifted Nicholas’s hand in his, held it fast. The dying knight managed a pain-filled, weary smile.

“Paladine, help me!” Nicholas said, gasping for breath.

A blue light bathed Michael, bathed the knight, washed the dreadful lines of pain from the gaunt face, as if he had been immersed in a lake of placid water. Time ceased its flow. Every person was arrested in motion, from Nikol, striving desperately to reach her brother, to the evil wizard, trying still to achieve his heinous goal. Michael, his heart filled with thankfulness, raised his eyes to the radiant blue goddess who stood at the entrance to the shining bridge.

“Mishakal,” Michael prayed, “grant me the power to heal this man, Paladine’s faithful servant.”

The blue light dimmed. The goddess’s face was sorrowful.

“I have no power here. The knight’s life is bound by the magician’s cursed wish to the dagger you hold. Only the dagger and the one who wields it, for good or evil, will bring this young man ease.”

Michael stared at the dagger in his hand with horror and the sudden, sickening realization of what he was being asked to do.

“You can’t mean this, Lady! What dread task is this you give me? I am a healer, not a killer!”

“I give you no task. I tell you how the knight’s pain may be forever ended. The choice is up to you. You can see the bridge, can you not?”

“Yes,” said Michael, looking with longing at the radiant, shining span and the peaceful, serene features of those ethereal figures who walked it. “I see it clearly.”

“Then you may cross it. Throw aside the dagger. The concerns of this world are no longer yours.”

Michael looked down at Nicholas, who lay still, eyes closed, in peaceful sleep … as long as the light of the goddess shone on him. When it was withdrawn, the terrible spell that bound him to his cruel suffering would be empowered once more. Nikol had ceased her bitter struggle and was on her knees, as near her brother as was possible for the magical barrier that barred her way.

“You can heal him, Michael,” she was saying.

Near her, the strange, black-robed mage, Raistlin, who had fought one of his own kind, watched Michael with glittering eyes that reflected back the goddess’s light, seemed to see and know all that was passing.

Who was this Raistlin? What was his purpose? Michael didn’t know, didn’t understand. He didn’t fathom any of this, knew himself suddenly to be nothing more than a frayed thread in a tangled skein.

Anger stirred in him again. What was his life or any of their lives worth to the gods, who live forever? How could he be expected to know what was right and what was wrong if he stumbled through life as blind as he’d been in that enchanted forest?

“While I am in the world, its concerns are mine,” cried Michael. “When I took your vows, Lady, I accepted responsibility for the world and its people. Those will be mine, as long as I live. How can you ask me to break them?”

“But by killing this man, Michael, you do break my vows.”

“So be it,” said the cleric harshly. He gripped the dagger with hands that trembled. “Must … must I stab him?”

“No,” said the goddess gently. “Draw blood only. That will break the spell.”

“And my vows?” Michael looked up at her again, calmly, not pleading, but in deep sadness. “Will I lose your favor?”

The goddess did not reply.

Michael bowed his head. The blue light faded. Time began its ticking, like the beating of a heart. He heard, behind him, Akar’s trampling footfalls, the rasping of his breath. He saw, before him, Nikol regarding him hopefully, expectantly. He felt the knight’s hand, still clasped in his own, stiffen in agony, saw the young man’s face twist.