The Bonding (The Song and the Rhythm) (36 page)

Pushing books across the room’s one large table, sending several crashing to the floor and nearly overturning all three lamps and setting the place afire, he set down his burden and turned to them. He eyed them critically as he thumped his staff onto the floor to regain its support.

“You’re in great danger.” He had a thick, rolling accent, and his voice rumbled deeply, which was strange since he was so thin and old. It seemed almost as if his voice would shake his frail body apart. Vaun wasn’t sure if he flinched because of the mage’s voice, the thump of the cane on the floor, or the look in his black eyes. Lymon sat in a chair across from them, not bothering to remove the books that already rested there.

Merdel sighed. “Ice and wind! Is that all you have to tell us? We already know that and have encountered it several times before. Did you find anything useful?”

Lymon ignored the wizard’s outburst and only waited until he quieted. “That may be true, but what I have to tell you is far worse than anything you’ve ever experienced. I began my search where you left off, Merdel. While you turned to fulfilling your Overlord’s commands, I began to turn back the pages of time.” He gestured to the books he’d dumped on the tabletop. “I had a suspicion of how the fire-burned lunatic might be doing it, and I, too, tuned myself to the energy of the barriers.”

He grunted. “I broke contact the first time I felt what he was doing. It was too much for me. That contact did aid my search, though, for I was tuned to the energy in a different way. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will tell you what I felt was similar to what another man felt many centuries ago.”

Merdel leaned forward eagerly, as did the others. “Who?” His impatience grew now that the answer was so near.

Lymon leaned close himself. “Tholar.” His sour breath made the name seem tainted and unclean.

Merdel’s jaw dropped, and he fell back in his chair. He stared dumbfounded at his old friend. “That’s impossible. His stones were lost six hundred years ago. He hid them where no one could find them.”

Lymon shook his head. “No one until Elak, ice curse him and water drown him. The way in which the energy is drained is identical to what Tholar wrote down.” He laid one gnarled hand on the cover of the largest book in front of him. His eyes regarded Merdel almost sadly. “I’m sorry, my friend. They’ve been found.”

“Who’s Tholar?” Vaun Tarsus had been carefully following the conversation but didn’t understand the significance of what the two wizards were talking about.

Merdel answered with his head in his hands. “He was a wizard who lived more than six hundred years ago. He was extraordinarily powerful, perhaps the most powerful of all time. His specialty was the creation of magical devices that could channel outside energy. Vast amounts of outside energy. His greatest, and worst, accomplishment was the creation of five small stones. Nobody knows exactly how he made them, but all wizards know what they can do. At least, those that don’t believe them to be myths, or the ravings of a madman.”

Drath met Merdel’s gaze when the wizard looked up. “Which is?”

Merdel turned to Lymon, wanting the old sorcerer to take over the explanation. Lymon shifted in his seat before he spoke, pulling a book out from under him that had been digging into his backside. “These stones draw their energy from nature. Many spells and devices, some people even say all, do this. But his did it in a different way. As I’m sure you all know, nature holds incredible power, put there by the Great God Himself. If you can tap it correctly, you can do almost anything. Most of Tholar’s devices draw from different areas of nature’s energy. Each one he made drew more, until he was drawing and using more power than any wizard ever dreamed. But he wanted more. He wasn’t power hungry, thank the Great God; he just wanted to see how much he could draw and to what uses he could put it. His quest for more and more ways to utilize more and more power led him to the creation of five stones. Five stones that, he discovered, drew more energy than all his previous devices combined. Five stones that allowed him access to more forces than even he imagined possible, and the safe usage of them. Five stones that led him to his death.”

Lymon cleared his throat noisily. “For all the many uses of his stones, they had one flaw. After using them for some time, Tholar began to notice changes in the natural order of things.” He fixed his gaze on Drath. “Did you feel that earthquake we had the other day?” Drath nodded. “Those aren’t supposed to happen here. But it was those kinds of changes Tholar began to see, and when he found out what was causing them, he realized the horrible mistake he’d made.”

Lymon leaned forward again, his eyes intense. “His stones drew their power, every drop of it, from the most vast source of magical energy in existence: the natural barriers that separate the worlds and hold them together. And, he found that, in using that power, he was weakening and would eventually destroy them.” The five men on the opposite sides of the table gasped. “That’s right, in his attempt to serve mankind with more and more magic, he’d found the way to destroy everything.

“He was horrified. Perhaps the greatest gift the Great God ever gave to the world was the heart of goodness He gave to Tholar. The man had no evil in him, and that is what saved us all. He couldn’t destroy his stones, for he didn’t know what they would do then. Their connection to the barriers was too close to risk it. So he scattered them. He spent the rest of his life finding hiding places for them. Until now, no one knew where they were, and in all the searching that followed his death no one found them, thank the Great God. After he hid the last one, Tholar destroyed everything he’d ever written about their creation. Then he destroyed himself.

“He knew evil men would force him to reveal their hiding places if given the chance, so he cast himself off the top of the View. When he died, all knowledge of the stones died with him. The only reference we have to them is the warning he wrote in all his surviving texts. He told all future wizards to stay away from them. Most listened; others didn’t. But still no one found them.

“In time, the barriers grew strong again, the Balance was restored. The stories of Tholar and the strange things that occurred when he was alive became myths that were only partially believed, which was all to the good. In the face of the gravest danger to face our world, all seemed at last safe. Until now.”

Lymon paused to rise and fetch himself something to drink. He wove through the stacks of books and papers with practiced ease but had to search some time for his pitcher and a cup. At last finding both, he returned to the table and took a long drink before continuing. Vaun noticed the mage’s hand shook as he raised the tankard to his lips.

“How Elak—wind burn him—found them, I’ve no idea. He probably searched for decades before he found them all. How he’s using them, I don’t know, either. I just know he’s using them to drain the barriers. Neither is he using the energy. I don’t even know what happens to it. All he seems interested in doing is draining them dry. Again, I don’t know how.” He drank from his cup again, which to Vaun smelled like strong ale. “There’s probably something in that ice-cursed book of black magic he’s got. What the source of that text or its information is I don’t even want to guess at. But how he found them and how he’s using them isn’t important. How to stop him, is.”

Merdel stopped rubbing his temples. “But he can’t be stopped.” He’d been sitting quietly all during Lymon’s story, his eyes closed. Now despair covered his features as he turned his speckled black eyes on his companions. “The stones can’t be destroyed. If Tholar himself couldn’t do it, we certainly can’t. And even if we kill Elak, which will be even more difficult now, someone else will find them and use them again. If Tholar’s hiding places could be found, any we’d use would be found, too. And we’ve no idea how to reverse what he’s done already. We’re doomed.”

Lymon shook his head. “You’re wrong, Merdel. You always were a pessimist. There is a way to destroy the stones.” He paused to drink again, his hands shaking even more. He seemed to grow more and more apprehensive as his story continued, as if afraid of being hunted.

“What? How?” Merdel ignored his friend’s distress, concentrating instead on what Lymon would tell him.

Lymon swallowed. His expression was one of great hope overshadowed by tremendous fear. “Gwyndar’s Wand.”

“That stupid thing.” Merdel was aghast. “It has no power. It doesn’t do anything. Gwyndar was a fool.”

“He was not!” Lymon pounded the table with his fist, making the lamps rattle and the pitcher slosh a little of its contents onto the manuscripts underneath it. He acted as impatient as Merdel, and his body language bespoke a desperate need to tell his story. “Gwyndar was a genius. He was just single-minded.”

Merdel scoffed but said nothing.

Seeing the confusion on the faces of Merdel’s companions, Lymon clarified, calming a little. “Gwyndar lived a couple hundred years ago. His one goal for living was to find a way to destroy Tholar’s Stones, for he’d had a vision they’d be found. That’s all he tried to do. Just before he died, he created a wand. This wand serves no
apparent
purpose.” He glared accusingly at Merdel, daring the bearded mage to speak, but Merdel only shook his head, muttering that perhaps Lymon had finally lost his mind. “The only thing it does, the reason it was created, is to destroy the Stones of Tholar.”

Merdel sat up in his chair. “You don’t know that.” His accented voice was harsh with accusation.

“Fire and boiling water, Merdel, let me finish!” Lymon’s own accent thickened and his voice deepened, if that were possible, as his anger, born of frustration and fear, grew. “It
can
destroy them.”

Turning to the others again, the old mage continued in a much calmer tone. Apparently, talking to them was less stressful. “Gwyndar of course never tested it against any of the stones, but he knew it could do it. His writings on the wand were lost shortly after his death, and I only just recently found them in a farmhouse not too far from here. The man who had the writings had bought them at a fair to decorate his bookshelf. He couldn’t read a word. He only agreed to give it to me after I traded a book twice as thick for it. It was a text on the lost art of Tapisian snail farming.” Lymon snorted derisively.

He emptied his tankard and refilled it before continuing. “Gwyndar’s book details how he tested the wand against the power of the barriers. His test fulfilled his lifelong search. The wand acts in such a way that the stones can be safely destroyed, their captured energy releasing in a controlled burst back into the magic of the barriers. It can do it.” He gazed deep into the eyes of each person in the room. “It’s the only way.”

Merdel sighed. He didn’t agree with Lymon, but if his old friend said it was so, he was probably right. Lymon had that annoying quality about him. “That’s only if Elak is using the stones to trap the energy. If he’s using them to dissolve it, there’s nothing to release back into the barriers.”

Lymon shrugged. “Perhaps. But I don’t think that matters. I still say the wand can restore the energy that is lost to the barriers. No matter what Elak—fire incinerate him—has done with it.”

“Even if you’re right,” Merdel said, not yet convinced, “we can’t get to the wand.”

“Why not?” Vaun asked.

The wizard hesitated and glanced at Thorne. “It’s in Mahal.”

Thorne grunted a rather unsavory remark, and Drath shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Rush and Dart eyed each other, conversing quietly in elvish. Their voices didn’t sound happy. Vaun sat uncomprehending, not knowing why mention of the city would create such reactions.

Lymon noticed Vaun’s curiosity. “Mahal is a dangerous place, as Merdel and Thorne can easily tell you. To be brief, it’s a hotbed of intrigue and murder, and no one is safe within its walls. No Mahalian can be trusted, and all of them are deceptive scum.” Merdel expressed indignation at Lymon’s observation. “With one possible exception, that is.”

Pained resignation revealed itself on his mage’s bearded face. “He’s right, though. My countrymen are rather untrustworthy.” He turned to look at his fellow magician. “Are you sure about this, Lymon? No one has ever found any power in that wand.”

Lymon didn’t answer; he was too busy staring at Vaun. “You’re the one from the other world, aren’t you?” He waited until the Swordsman nodded. “I thought so. You have that kind of look about you, when one knows to be looking. Yet you seem somehow attached to this world, as if linked to it.” No one said a word, and Vaun endured another long bout of the old wizard’s scrutiny, his black eyes glittering and seeming to Vaun to penetrate to where his deepest secrets were kept.

Shaking his head as if coming out of deep thought as he took a long drink, Lymon muttered what sounded like “fire-burned Ramener” before turning to Merdel. “It doesn’t hold any power. It draws it out. And it only draws it out of the stones. That is its sole purpose. And I’m as sure of it as I am of anything. You must get that wand, Merdel. I know you don’t want to return to Mahal, but if you want to stop Elak, you
must…have…that…wand
. Nothing else will help you.”

The bearded wizard sighed heavily. “Okay, if you say it can do it, then it can. I don’t like the idea, and I know Thorne doesn’t, but we have to stop in Mahal now.” His eyes clouded as he remembered events in his past. Unpleasant events.

“One thing more.” Lymon held up a finger, both for emphasis and as a warning. “Elak—water curse him—has acquired help.”

“From whom?” Drath sounded like he didn’t know what to believe, with all the strange talk passing between Merdel and Lymon.

“Not who…what. He’s…”

“Listen.” Merdel raised a hand for silence. All obediently quieted, though Lymon did it with obvious reluctance. He seemed intent on finishing his tale.

Vaun waited a tense minute, then said, “To what? I don’t hear anything.”

The others nodded agreement.

“That’s just it. Something’s missing.”

“What?” Vaun asked.

Everyone else shook their heads, all unable to answer the question.