Chapter 22

The hours of darkness this time seemed to move more slowly than they had only a day before. Khamsin prowled restlessly around the confines of her room as she waited for the castle noises to cease. The night before, much of her fatigue was genuine. She slept, confident in Nixa’s watchful eyes.

Tonight, though, she was thoroughly rested and well-fed. Sleep wouldn’t come. Even the gray feline seemed more agitated than usual. Khamsin wondered if the same thoughts plagued the smaller mind as well but was reluctant to share her concerns with the cat. To do so wouldn’t be reassuring to either of them.

The Sorcerer was due to return. Lord Tedmond said as much at Khamsin’s first and only meeting with him in the hearth room. And judging from the attitudes of the guards and the servants, it was their opinion as well. The only problem was when.

The few discreet questions Khamsin lay upon the kitchen help gave her little information to work with. It was not unusual, it seemed, for Master Ro to be absent from Traakhal for extended periods of time. It was also not unusual for him to reside in the great castle for months, even seasons on end without leaving.

Khamsin began to realize that after three hundred years, any display of behavior was considered within reason.

But she had only tonight. The longer she delayed, the more questions would be asked about Camron of Tynder’s Hill. For now, she had enough to worry about with the comings and goings of the castle staff.

The inexplicable appearances, and disappearances, of the Sorcerer could not even be taken into consideration.

If only she could convince herself of that! She winced now at her foolhardiness of the previous evening, when she had blithely traipsed around the East Wing of the castle in the dark. Her shielding may have protected her from him, if he sought her whereabouts. But it also hid the Sorcerer from her.

There was one other constant she learned in her conversations with the kitchen maids as she had helped herself to a thick slice of fresh baked bread earlier that evening. It was that the castle - save for the aging Lord Tedmond - seemed to operate on a much more efficient level when the Sorcerer was absent.

Not that it was said he ever interfered. In truth, there were those in the lower stations of service who admitted to having never even set eyes upon their Master. They were also the ones more willing to gossip about the Sorcerer.

The problem lay with those who had seen, or knew, their Master. They were the ones who said very little, who drew an almost inaudible breath when his name was mentioned.

Khamsin was familiar with the single-minded devotion and respect often accorded the lord of the manor by his people, as was his due. But at Traakhal, she wondered if it weren’t more than that.

If it weren’t unembellished fear.

And in the day and a half she had lived amongst them that same fear crept up into her spine, too.

She splayed her hands out in front of her in the darkness, raising them towards the window ’til they came between her face and the twin moons, now cresting high in the winter sky. The pale light filtered through, glistening in the depths of her eyes. She allowed herself to be drawn by the silvery ribbons, slowly, carefully, still maintaining contact with the nervous gray feline that was her watchdog. She sought out any strong emanations of power nearby. If he traveled, perhaps by horseback, or boat…but no. The emanations from the walls of the castle itself were too strong. Too much magic had been cast here over the centuries. The residue from the spells and incantations now laced through the air like smoke from an ever-burning fire.

When she first learned her magic at Tanta Bron’s side, she came up against the same problem. The old woman’s cave would seem to pulse with the power of ancient spells. In time, she’d been able to overcome that interference, even use it to her advantage.

But try as she might, there was no way she could overcome the presence of the Sorcerer now.

And he wasn’t even in residence. Of that she was sure.

"There’s nothing more I can do," she said softly to her cat, though the comment was unnecessary. It made little difference to Nixa. She would do as Khamsin requested, out of love.

Khamsin knelt on the floor, taking the small feline into her arms.

"Now," she whispered again, into ears as soft as an evening breeze in summer.

And they were gone.

She placed the cat on top of the mantle that ringed the room and, her hands now free, unlatched the clasp on her sword. It was strictly for precaution. To draw it would shed more light in the darkened room, for the moons had temporarily become obscured by a cloud. But to draw it would also signal that something of power entered the chamber, more than the dropping of her shielding or the use of her minor spells to transport herself here. And that was something she didn’t wish to do.

Besides, she knew her eyes would adjust in a few moments to the darkness. And the moons should come out, again.

Nixa high-stepped fluidly over a series of large amulets, her whiskers twitching at the pungent odor of the perfumed oils that coated their surfaces. She relayed her opinions back to Khamsin but her mistress wasn’t interested.

‘Not now,’ she chastised silently. She followed the intricate carvings on the floor ’til she stood in the same place she had the night before when the first light of dawn filtered in, urging her return to her chamber.

But it was now a hair’s breath of two hours past midnight and hours before daybreak. And this time she had no intention of returning to her room, daybreak or not.

This much she knew: when she smashed the Orb, it would send a searing signal to any and all of the Powers. Other wizards, like Ciro, and mages and alchemists would feel it like a rent in their flesh; village Healers would start and gasp. What the Sorcerer would do, she chose not to imagine. But she accepted that at that moment, he would return to Traakhal.

But it would be too late.

Trembling slightly, Khamsin held her hands out until she felt the spellbound curtain before her. She stepped towards it.

"Kiasidira," she said in a hushed voice. The curtain parted, closing behind her as she came inside.

Many hundreds of miles to the east, in the cluttered attic rooms in the top of an old warehouse, a black-cloaked figure felt the parting and stiffened. The parchment in his hands drifted to the floor.

Nixa stirred restlessly underneath the north window. Khamsin heard the sound but ignored it, her eyes now fixed on the churning of brilliant colors inside the Orb. She reached through the wide side opening of the cabinet, fingertips barely grazing its surface. She felt a tingling travel through her.

On either end were two large handles of wood. They weren’t attached to the cabinet but rested on a crosspiece. The Orb could be removed from the pedestal in order to facilitate its use.

Or its destruction.

She grasped the handles firmly and slowly lifted the Orb from its cradle, testing its weight and balance as she did. It was bulky but not as heavy as she expected. She wove her fingers around the thick handles.

The position was awkward and cumbersome. It might slip but not break. It could roll through the protective curtain. She released the handles, but only momentarily, so as to change the position of her hands.

There. That was better. This was no more difficult than lifting a heavy laundry basket. In spite of her circumstances, or perhaps because of them, the thought struck her as oddly amusing. She rested the handles again in the crosspiece. A soft giggle rose in her throat. Then died abruptly.

A pulsation of power shot through her. She choked back a scream, her fingers flying from the handles as if they’d touched molten metal. She collapsed in half, her legs buckling.

Her world exploded inside and outside of her simultaneously. Her conscious mind reeled. She could see nothing but a swirl of colors before her eyes. A stabbing brightness, a searing brilliance. She tore her gaze from the Orb as if the translucent object itself was the source of her torture.

But it wasn’t. That much she sensed as she clung to the thick silver bars of the cabinet. Nothing was coming from the Orb, but rather was building around her, through the very air of the mage circle.

The searing energy intensified. She slid to her knees. The mind-deafening pulsations continued.

She grasped one of the pedestal’s thick wooden legs and tried to pull herself to her feet. Her fingers slid numbly down the ornate posts. Then a second wave of searingly-hot energy rolled over her and through her, tossing her like flotsam in the tide. She dropped to one knee and clung to the pedestal, fighting for air, struggling to breathe. Her head fell forward. She buried her face against her arms. But there was no protection, no cessation. The pulsations grew stronger until she felt them come to a focal point burning directly into her back.

Weakly, she knelt next to the wooden column. She’d waited too long. There was only one being, only one entity in the Land who possessed that much power, that much force that his mere presence alone was capable of crushing the strongest of men to the earth, flattening them into the very dust they came from.

That being was the Sorcerer.

The Master of Traakhal was home.

Suddenly, the incessant pinpricks against her skin disappeared. And, save for her breath that was still coming in great gasps, it was as if nothing at all had happened. She raised her face and peered through the pedestal. The stars in the dark sky outside still twinkled through the narrow window before her. The night air was still.

Then she heard the soft rustle of cloth like the sound of long robes or a cloak behind her. Trembling, she inched her body around in her crouch ’til she faced the source of the sound.

And there, clad in the night-black riding regalia of the North Land Hill Raiders, with a long black cloak secured by a

platinum clasp at his throat, was Tarkir’s first born. The Sorcerer of Traakhal-Armin.

She leaned back against the pedestal and breathed a name in disbelief.

"…Rylan."