Troy Denning - The Amber Enchantress

“Magnus, heal yourself!” Sadira said, pulling a piece of slimy tentacle off his shoulder.

The windsinger nodded and began his song.

The welt did not close. Instead, the tip of a brown root sprouted from the wound. Sadira snatched Rhayn’s weapon and used the erdlu claw to cut the thing off.

Magnus howled in pain, then took the lance from her hand and flung it away. “No!” he cried. “It’s part of me now. I can feel it growing out of my bones.”

Another root appeared from the wound. The three companions watched in horror as it grew larger and longer, until was as big around as Sadira’s wrist. Suddenly, the tip turned downward and plunged into the soil. Rhayn and Sadira grabbed the stalk and, ignoring Magnus’s scream, tried to pull it free. The women were nearly jerked off their feet as the thing burrowed into the ground. Finally, when the stem had grown so large that they could no longer grasp it, the sisters gave up.

“We’ve got to try something else,” Sadira said. “Maybe blasting it away?”

“That would be like taking off a leg, maybe worse,” Magnus said, his teeth clenched in pain.

“Then what do you want us to do?” demanded Rhayn, her voice betraying her frustration.

“We could reverse the metamorphosis for you,” said a deep voice.

Sadira turned around and saw that all of the shadow people had manifested themselves in solid form. They were standing several yards away, their cold blue eyes fixed on the root attaching Magnus to the ground.

“You can do that?” the sorceress asked.

“Of course,” answered the shadow. “This is our land, is it not?”

Sadira and Rhayn stepped aside and waved the shadows forward. “Please do.”

The group’s leader shook his head. “First, there is the matter of payment,” he said. “It has been more than a year since our last shipment. We had hoped you were the couriers.”

“We’re not, so stop wasting time and fix him,” Rhayn snorted, pointing at Magnus.

The shadow shook his head. “Not without payment.”

“I’ll pay you!” the elf yelled, spreading her fingers to draw the energy for a spell.

Sadira laid a restraining hand on her sister’s arm. To the shadows, she said, “I’m sorry, but we have no obsidian-”

“Then your friend shall remain as he is until you bring it to us,” hissed the speaker.

With that, he walked over and seized the weapon that Magnus had thrown to the ground earlier. As his darkness engulfed the makeshift lance, the other shadows went over to where Sadira and Rhayn had been butchering the erdlu. They collected all of the claws, scales, and bones that the two sisters had labored so hard to harvest, then melted into the ground and swam off toward the distant tower.

“Now what?” Rhayn demanded.

“We follow them,” Sadira said. “If they can reverse what happened to Magnus, I’ll wager they can control the tower’s magic. All we have to do is figure out a way to convince them to give us what we want.”

“Leave that to me,” said Rhayn. “The shadow has not been cast that can out-bargain an elf.’

“And what about me?” Magnus asked.

Sadira gave him a sad look. “I don’t see that we can help you by staying here,” she said. “If we’re at the tower, we’ll be back with the shadow people to free you.”

The windsinger nodded. “I guess that makes sense, but what about food-and water?”

Rhayn kissed Magnus on the cheek, at the same time patting the brown stalk that anchored him to the ground. “Isn’t that what roots are for?”

Sadira slipped past the gnarled form of another bogo tree, taking care to stay well away from the dagger-sized thorns covering its trunk. As she moved, the sorceress kept a watchful eye on the burled limbs overhead. Although she and Rhayn had been in the forest less than three hours, they had already been attacked a half-dozen times by snakelike beasts lurking in the trees. The creatures liked to swing down as their prey passed beneath a branch, trying to impale their chosen victims on the barbed spines that covered their bodies.

Once Sadira was safely past the bogo tree, she turned her attention forward, expecting to see nothing but more twisted, stark boles. Instead, she was surprised to find herself at the edge of a small glade covered with clumps of ash-colored brush. Thousands of fleecy white blossoms, held aloft on long yellow stems, swayed back and forth in the hot wind.

Sadira hardly noticed the meadow. During the last day and a half, she and Rhayn had seen a dozen different fields. All had been equally beautiful, and all had concealed hazards that had to be negotiated at the peril of their lives. The sorceress was more interested in what lay at the heart of the glade.

There, a glaring needle of white stones rose into the sky, as high as a cloud and as sheer as a sculpted column. At the bottom stood an ancient gatehouse, guarding a narrow case of stairs that circled up the spire until it could no longer be distinguished as a separate feature. The pillar seemed to have no summit, at least not that Sadira could see. It simply grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared into the sky.

“I’d say we’ve reached the Pristine Tower,” said Rhayn, coming up behind the sorceress.

“Not yet,” said Sadira, cautiously stepping into the meadow. “There’s still a hundred yards to go-and that’s no small distance in this place.”

The two women advanced slowly, avoiding contact with the brush and its blossoms. When they could not, they carefully inspected the stems for thorns or stickers that might draw even a drop of blood. It was a slow and tedious way to travel, but with what had happened to Magnus still fresh in their memories, the women knew it was necessary.

They were about halfway across when a chorus of snorts and squeals erupted from a short distance away. Yellow canes and fleecy blossoms danced wildly as the growling creatures charged toward the sisters.

“I’ve got it,” Rhayn said, pulling a pinch of sand from her pocket.

An instant later, several squat rodents with the bodies of weasels and the tusks of boars charged from the undergrowth. They came directly at the two women, their clawed feet spraying dirt high into the air.

Rhayn tossed the sand in their direction and spoke her incantation. The grains began to sparkle and formed a small cloud close to the ground. The beasts rushed straight into the scintillating fog and promptly collapsed on top of each other, sound asleep.

“That’s the last of my spells,” Rhayn said, turning back toward the tower.

“I’m no better off,” said Sadira. “We’ll just have to hope for the best.”

During the trek the tower, the two women had relied on their magic to defend themselves from a myriad of creatures. Unfortunately, whenever they cast a spell, the incantation vanished from their minds. Usually, the mystic words and gestures were renewed through study, but because Faenaeyon had not let them keep their spellbooks, they could not replenish their spells.

Sadira resumed her careful approach to the tower, listening even more intently for any hint of trouble. As they neared the white spire, the sorceress saw that it was made of the same porous stone as the grotto at Cleft Rock. Although she found this puzzling, she was not concerned by it. Since both she and Rhayn had exhausted their spells, there would be no need to draw magical energy through the stone.

A few tense minutes later, they reached the gatehouse. It was an ancient structure, solidly built from granite blocks and lined with the dark slits of arrow loops. Stone hinges still hung from the gate posts, and beneath the archway, the spikes of a shattered portcullis were lodged in the foyer’s cracked flagstones.