Black wizards - Douglas Niles [74]
She only noticed as she stretched to keep from falling. Driving powerful wings downward, she felt her feet lift from the ground. She looked around, and her eyes saw the Moonwell in minute detail, falling away below. Again and again she extended her wings, aware of Genna soaring beside her, but only slowly did she understand.
She was an eagle. She was flying!
* * * * *
Alexei endured days and nights of black silence chained to the wall of a stone cell. Madness came closer daily, and the mage had few weapons with which to fight for sanity.
Only hours after Alexei's imprisonment, Cyndre and a cruel painmaster had paid a visit to the cell. The painmaster was an expert from Calimshan who had gleefully broken Alexei's hands, taking care to shatter every bone.
For a time the agonizing pain of those wounds had served to give him focus. But gradually the bones healed, freezing the appendages into twisted claws, useless for the delicate spell-casting gestures required by Alexei's craft. And as they healed, the pain lessened, and Alexei had only the darkness and solitude to comfort him.
Now that the pain was gone completely, he had only his hate to keep him going. And so he nurtured that hatred, caressing it in his mind, building it and storing it for the moment it could be released. He hated the king and Kryphon; he was certain that they had betrayed him. And he hated the painmaster who had broken his hands.
But most of all he hated Cyndre. The mage thought over and over of ways to destroy his former master. He relished thoughts of the sorcerer's death, a lingering death, utilizing a variety of methods, most of them magical.
But even had he been able to use his hands, he could not have cast a spell, for Cyndre had encased his cell within a cone of silence. Neither a chip of stone falling to the floor nor a hoarse scream from a terrified throat made any noise in that awful stillness.
For a time, the mage wondered why Cyndre had kept him alive instead of slaying him outright, but then he remembered the lurid god of the cleric Hobarth and his bloodthirsty altar. Blood of high magic flowed through Alexei's veins, and when Hobarth returned from his mission, the altar of Bhaal would welcome Alexei to its eternal night.
* * * * *
"Welcome, travelers!"
A tall man jumped smoothly from a tree limb into the pool of magical light. He was dressed in brown trousers and a long green shirt, and his face, through his flowing red beard, was aloof though not openly hostile. He spoke again.
"You really should take more care, you know. Traveling the ways of Dernall Forest on a night so dark!"
Tristan looked at the ring of archers surrounding them. None had moved a muscle. "Perhaps you would be good enough to provide us with an escort?" he asked.
"Ha ha!" The man gestured broadly, as if inviting his men to join the laughter, but they remained poised to shoot. "An audacious one – I like that in a man. Perhaps you'll be allowed to hang onto a coin or two!"
Tristan felt a small measure of relief. These were bandits, and this encounter would certainly cost them money. But they were not soldiers and thus were not likely to turn them over to the king's mercenaries. Still, this was no ragged band. The discipline shown by the bowmen was worthy of a veteran company of warriors, and they were supported by one or more magic-users, as evidenced by the light spell. These men could be very dangerous, he was certain.
"Now, gentlemen, if you'll be good enough to hand over your purses, we can conclude this little interview. Don't be stingy, now!"
Tristan saw Pawldo scowling to his right, and he realized that the halfling was probably carrying a heavy pouch of coins. Neither the prince nor Daryth had much to lose by paying the bandits, but the halfling had no doubt assembled a tidy profit from his year-long endeavor. Then, too, Tristan remembered, he had lifted a pouch from the officer