The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [212]
“That is so.”
“But you also said demons can never be sated, no matter how much they consume.”
“No, they cannot.”
“Then what’s to keep it from getting stronger as it feeds, strong enough to escape completely?”
Sareth gazed at his wooden leg and said nothing.
71.
It was Vani who broke the silence.
“Brother, you have yet to tell us how you learned of the demon beneath Tarras.”
Sareth bowed his head, and he seemed to be murmuring something. Was he gathering his thoughts? Or was it a prayer? Before Travis could decide, the Mournish man looked up, his dark eyes haunted.
“It was two years ago that I learned of the demon—not long after you left us, Vani. A dervish came to our caravan where we were camped, at the foot of the Mountains of the Shroud.”
“A dervish?” Falken said, and this question surprised Travis. He had always thought Falken knew everything about the people and history of Eldh. Evidently there were limitations even to the ancient bard’s knowledge.
Sareth glanced at the bard. “The free working of blood magic is forbidden among the Mournish until the time we regain Morindu the Dark, lest we become like the Scirathi—covetous of power. However, there are those who have chosen to forsake this law, and who strike off alone to master what secrets of sorcery they can. These are the dervishes. Most of them are mad—that is the price they pay for their solitude and the secrets they learn—and this one was no exception.
“He was dying when he stumbled into the caravan. I think that was the only reason he spoke to me, to boast of the mysteries he had learned before death took him. He was dry and thin as bones left in a desert, and his face was a mask of scabs and flies. He said he had come from the Morgolthi, the Hungering Land, and I did not doubt him. He said he had dug there, in the burning sands, and he had found … this.”
Sareth drew something from a pocket. It looked to Travis like a thick, wedge-shaped piece of pottery, covered with angular markings.
“All that night, as I watched over him, the dervish babbled in his sleep. He was burning with fever, and little of what he said made sense. But a few words I heard over and over. The Dark shall rise again, he said. And, His blood is the key. At dawn I watched the life leave him, and we buried him there.”
Vani reached out, took the shard of pottery from Sareth. “What is it? What did the dervish give his life to dig from the sands of the Morgolthi?”
“It’s a piece of a tablet,” Sareth said. “That I knew at once, although I could not read it. However, Mirgeth could when I took it to him. It is written in the ancient tongue of Amún.”
“What does it say?” Falken asked.
“Very little. A few fragments of words, enough to let us know it was written during the War of the Sorcerers, that was all. I was prepared to forget the dervish and his ravings when, accepting the shard back from Mirgeth, I dropped it. It struck the ground and …”
Sareth took the shard back from Vani. Carefully, he pulled the shard into two halves and drew something out. It was a thin circle of gold.
Vani sat up straight. “A fa’deth.”
“Yes.” Sareth glanced at the others. “It is a fa’deth, a message-disk, used by the high sorcerers of Morindu to send missives to one another.”
In the crimson glow of the coals, Travis could make out fine engravings on the disk. “What does it say?”
“Make it speak for us, Sareth,” Vani said, her eyes as bright as the golden disk.
He shook his head. “To do so requires blood. Once the elders let me use the fa’deth, but once was enough, and I must not shed more blood for it carelessly.”
“You mean that it can speak to you?” Grace said.
“As I said, it is how the highest sorcerers sent messages to one another. Even if the disk were intercepted, the thief would not be able to hear the missive.”
“Unless the thief was a sorcerer as well,” Travis murmured, not realizing he had spoken until he saw Sareth gazing at him.
“What did it tell you?” Vani said.
Sareth drew in a breath. “That a demon had been imprisoned in a mound of white stone north across the sea—a mound,