Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [97]
“And where is the talisman?” asked the wyrm in a silken voice. He probed, staring with his great yellow eyes, penetrating the depths within the skull.
Abruptly the serpent saw the image change, and he sensed the truth as he beheld the human lair in the mountains. “Your heart of blood and stone is there!”
The skull remained as ever, but did Flayze now detect a mocking leer in the eternally grinning teeth?
“I know the place,” he whispered. “The mountaintop stronghold… I have seen it, tolerated it, for these many years.”
The skull was silent, still. But the shadowy stare of those dead eyes seemed to penetrate the dragon’s very being.
Instinctively Flayze hated that place, hated the powerful allure that drew the attentions of his artifact. The skull wanted the stone with a desperate, powerful longing. The red dragon, on the other hand, had many treasures. He could afford to scorn the chance to add another bauble to his collection.
Wings spreading, the dragon turned toward the world, ready to fly.
Behind him, the skull watched, silent and motionless as ever, its white teeth locked in an eternal grimace.
CHAPTER 34
Thee Master of Loreloch Second Majetog, Reapember 374 AC “I was wondering how long it would take you to come for her. I’m impressed, of course, that you seem to have dispatched Zack so handily, but I was a trifle disappointed when you hadn’t broken into Loreloch by last night. I thought you were taking an awfully cavalier approach to this pretty kendermaid’s rescue.”
For a moment, confronted by that familiar, dangerous voice, Danyal froze. He pictured Kelryn Darewind lurking in the darkness, like a cat who had found two mice out of their hole. The candle in Danyal’s hand flared weakly, and he saw Mirabeth’s eyes, so hopeful an instant before, cloud with a mixture of fear and despair.
Dan, too, felt a growing measure of hopelessness. At the same time, he wondered how the man had known to wait here for him. Remembering the noise that had crashed outside the manor walls, the lad wondered if the bandit lord had been alerted by Emilo’s premature diversion. In any event, he was here in the darkness, watching and laughing at them.
But then Dan’s instincts took over; he tugged Mira-beth out of the cell and started down the musty corridor, away from the direction of that soft, menacing voice.
“Halt!”
Kelryn barked the word, and just like that Danyal’s feet ceased to move.
He tried to urge Mirabeth along but found that she, too, might as well have been glued to the floor. The two of them squirmed and strained but couldn’t pull their boots free. This was magic, Danyal realized with sinking spirits, knowing that some sort of spell had acted to cloak them in this cast of immobility.
“You had no chance of really making a successful rescue, you know-no chance at all,” declared the bandit lord, sauntering from the darkened recesses of the dungeon. Suddenly the two young people could see him, but not because of the candle that still flared brightly in Danyal’s trembling hand.
No, the lad realized. Rather, it seemed that there was some kind of eerie light emanating from Kelryn Dare-wind himself. The man was outlined in a pale green glow, an illumination not unlike the natural phosphorescence Danyal had observed on some of the lichens that grew in shady places near Waterton.
Except that this glow was clearly, uncannily powerful, in a way that no natural glow could ever be. In fact, it seemed as though the greenish luminescence actually smelled of some sort of arcane power, some inner might that allowed it to freeze them so helplessly in their tracks. When the bandit lord came closer, he smiled, white teeth gleaming in the strange light.
“I knew tonight would be the night that you came for her. I knew it even before your friend made such an untidy racket outside the walls.”
Now Dan could see that the pale light glowed from between the man’s fingers, sickly beams of eerie illumination expanding from Kelryn Darewind’s hand to spread through the dungeon. He held an object there, something