Black wizards - Douglas Niles [40]
Cyndre tapped his chin in thought. "You have done well," he said at last. "I fear our comrade Alexei is lost to us. We can but see that his loss causes us no damage."
"Is Razfallow the solution?"
"No, Kryphon. I have other plans for the assassin. But we can afford to be patient in the matter of Alexei. We shall wait. He will do nothing for some time. Alexei is not a man of action. But our time will come. When the cleric returns from his mission to Gwynneth, he will find Alexei waiting for him, ready to offer his blood as the tears of Bhaal."
* * * * *
Robyn walked hesitantly toward the pond. She had replaced her torn gown with a leather jerkin. "I can't kill him!" she repeated to herself. For once, her teacher had asked her to do something that she could not reconcile with her faith. Or was this some kind of test? Did Genna seek to examine her devotion to the goddess, her obedience? "I don't care!" she told herself angrily. "I can't kill him!"
But neither could she allow Acorn to remain in the grove. No other possibility even entered her mind. The man's look of stark madness – his clutching, greedy hands – stuck vividly in her memory and sent a shiver down her spine. Fortunately, her druid spell had been able to stop him.
She made up her mind to expel him from the grove, sending him away with a command never to return. It was not what her teacher had commanded her to do, but she could not bring herself to slay him. Evil, Genna had called him – and he was. Still, Robyn felt that he was not entirely responsible for his actions.
She crossed the garden and moved among the great oaks, nearing the pond. As she passed the place where she had been tearing up the vines weeks earlier, she noticed that the stout stick she had used to pry the vines now lay beside the sturdy trunk. Feeling vaguely uneasy, she picked it up.
She wished for Tristan's presence with a sudden, surprising intensity. The prince, she knew, would have had no difficulty enforcing Gennas' order.
She emerged from the oaks, expecting to see Acorn still frozen upon the riverbank. But the stranger was gone.
Her uneasiness grew into worry as she stepped from between the huge trees. She moved carefully along the grassy bank, looking at the ground for signs of his departure. The riverbank here was a narrow strip of field, bordered by the river on one side and thick undergrowth on the other. The river was about forty feet wide and three feet deep. Its crystalline waters, racing over colorful stones, formed the southern border of the Great Druid's grove.
Suddenly she heard movement in the undergrowth and whirled to see Acorn lunging toward her with a crazed gleam in his eyes. He cackled unintelligibly as he moved far faster than his feeble appearance suggested possible.
She lifted the stick and chanted the single word again.
"Stop!"
Acorn did stop, but not from any effect of her spell. Instead, the madman stomped his feet and howled with laughter. Then he became very quiet, peering at Robyn with intense concentration.
His look was the most frightening thing she had ever seen.
When he began to mumble words that sounded like spell-casting, her fright turned to sheer terror. Her mouth fell open. But Acorn couldn't cast spells – or could he? What did his words mean?
And then she understood that he commanded druidic magic, as upon Acorn's final word, a buzzing swarm of insects hummed from his hand to cluster about her on the riverbank. Robyn felt a fiery stinger lash into her cheek as more of the creatures landed upon her, seeking every patch of exposed skin. The sound of the swarm was a droning so loud that it seemed certain to drive her mad.
She suppressed an urge to scream – she dared not open her mouth. Instead she turned to run awkwardly to the stream. Her eyes were tightly shut as she flung herself headlong into the cool water. She forced herself to stay underwater, swimming downstream for as long as she could hold her breath. When she finally burst to the surface, she saw that the mass of insects was gradually swarming across the river, out