“How, when even passing contact with the thing kills?” my lord asked. “Such spells are far beyond our ken, Joisan. It would take one with the Power and learning of an Adept to undo this.”
I sighed, feeling weariness flood over me, having no answer to give him. I made to rise, but even as I did so, both he and Guret put out restraining hands. “Rest, Cera,” the boy said. “Our skill as cooks may not equal yours, but it shall suffice.”
Thus I rested, watching them bustle back and forth, chopping roots and vegetables, skinning and preparing Kame, building a crude but serviceable spit, making a fire in the stone fire-bowl we had discovered earlier.
The food they served seemed to strengthen me, restoring much of the energy I had lost. We all ate in hungry silence, then, our stomachs filled, sat back for a few moments of rest, gazing out at the deepening darkness. Finally Guret arose. “I will give the horses their grain tonight, m’lord,” he said, hefting the dwindling sack of feed.
“That is another thing we must trade for,” Kerovan observed, “if we want to keep the horses in riding trim. How many more feedings have we?”
“If I cut down gradually, perhaps three or four,” the young man said. His footsteps echoed slightly on the stone flooring as he left the courtyard.
Kerovan gestured at the eastern arches. “Can you still feel your Other?”
“Yes,” I made frank answer, “but as long as I wear the amulet, she can only reach me when I dream or let down my barriers.”
“I will sit up tonight and watch, lest you be plunged into another dream,” he said, his mouth set in a grim line. “Even though you say this Sylvya is not of the Shadow herself, it would not be well to chance another encounter.”
I hesitated, sorting through the impressions I had gained from this afternoon’s contact. “She has told me what it is needful for me to know,” I said at last. “The whyfor still puzzles me, but I—”
“Cera!” The shout echoed down the hallway toward us, accompanied by the beat of running feet. “Lord Kerovan!”
Together we rose as Guret plunged headlong into the courtyard, nearly toppling into the fountain in his rush. “The Great Hall!” he gasped. “There’s something there! Something…” He tried to steady his breathing. “Something that cannot be seen, or heard, or felt—but it is there, nonetheless! I swear it, by the Sacred Horsehide!”
My lord started for the entrance, his words reaching us faintly as we hurried after him. “I sense it, too, now. A questing, an opening…”
“As I started to walk past the throne, it was there—just there.” Guret’s words came quickly. “I could almost see something…”
I hastened my steps to a near run to catch up to Kerovan. “A questing? Nidu?”
“No.” He sounded positive. “I know not what it is, but there is no taint surrounding it, such as accompanied that one.” He frowned, the faint click of his hooves on the stone coming ever more rapidly. “But the boy has the right, there is something…”
“What?”
“Something familiar. I cannot recall—” He broke off as we burst into the Great Hall with its circular dais holding that huge, oddly shaped throne. As soon as I entered the room I, too, could feel the troubling.
Hesitantly, we began to walk around the chamber, to-ward the spot facing the throne—and as we took each step, that troubling grew stronger. There was Power alive here, ancient, growing evermore potent in the ages since it had last been tapped. It seemed to mist against our faces as my lord and I approached its center (Guret, perhaps wisely, having chosen to watch from the shelter ol the archway). I sniffed, detecting a sharp odor I could not put name to in the air.
Kerovan paused by the ramp leading up the dais to the throne, then, his face set, put out one hoof, beginning that ascent.
“Kerovan!” I made as if to grasp his arm.
“No,” he said, his voice ringing hollowly, overlaid with another, alien tone. “This is what I must do.”
I felt the resistance against my bone and flesh increase as I made to follow him, and stepped back, defeated. No spell I had ever enjoined could break down barriers of this kind. This, then, was for my lord to face alone.
Reaching that massive block of the quan-iron from which the seat had been carved, he hesitated for a long second, then, in one smooth motion, sat down. His hooves dangled by nearly a handspan, and he needs must squirm to find a comfortable perch thereon. Clearly, none of humankind had been the original occupant of the throne.
As if his presence in the seat were a signal, the mist before my eyes began to take on visible form, curdling in the center. Two widely separated blocks of the blue stone underfoot began to glow, azure light growing upward from between them, shimmering in the air. The Power centered between them, suspended like a web between pillars. It flickered, becoming visible as I backed away, suddenly frightened, thinking of the child. The forces uncoiling here in this room were vast—I had no wish to be trapped in some arcane backlash.
Violet trails uncoiled and crawled within that web of Power, coalescing, then stretching upward, moving into the form of a living creature—a gryphon!
Telpher! I thought, the image of the beast that had protected me during the battle with Galkur filling my mind. “Telpher?” I called, stretching out my hand toward that shape.
It turned eyes the color of gentle flames in my direction, opening its mouth as though to speak.
Joisan! Kerovan’s mindsharing reached through my concentration, bringing a warning. Touch it not—what you see is but an image of the Unlocker of Gates.
I turned to see him raise his hand, his fingers forming a sign I did not recognize; then, quickly, he sketched the winged globe that seemed to have been Landisl’s Power symbol. His mouth moved, twisting into an utterly alien shape as he spoke a word—one that I could not hear with my ears, except perhaps as a distant pain, but perceived with the inner sense.
I turned to see the gryphon image ripple in its center, then split and tear apart in lines of searing violet light. I put up a hand to shield my sight, and then Kerovan, with a sudden leap down, was beside me, his hand raised as if in greeting. “Come,” he called, using the ancient word from the Old Tongue.
He extended his hand toward the light—
There came a sudden clap of sound so high-pitched as to be only a sharp pain, and a wave of brilliance engulfed us both as a twig is swept by the spring floods.
Staggering back, I tripped over the edge of the dais, sitting down with a jar. My eyes watered and ran, my nose filled with the odor one can sometimes scent after a lightning strike. I struggled up, only to see not one, but two forms sprawled on the stones before me!
“Guret? Kerovan?”
There was the sound of running feet, then hands on my shoulders, helping me to rise. “Cera? What happened? Who is he?”
I swayed dizzily as I stood, looking up at the youth’s concerned face. If it was Guret who stood with me now, then who was the other man sprawled beside my lord? “My heart seemed near to fighting its way out of my breast .is I stumbled forward with the Kioga lad’s aid.
“Kerovan?”
My lord was sitting up, one hand to his head, dazed. The man beyond him groaned, rolling over, his sword and mail scraping against the stone flooring. He went helmed, and his equipment could have been forged at the same fires as my own sword and mail, or Kerovan’s…
A man of the Dales? Here, in Arvon? Brought to Kar Garudwyn by some sorcerous Gate, the like of which we had traversed?
Questions flooded my mind, but for the moment it was plain the man was in no condition to speak. I hastened to his side, touched fingers to his throat. His war helm made a half screen across his features, but my questing fingers found that our “guest” had a pulse, and a strong one.