The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [225]
On the twelth day she reached the ruins of the old guard tower. A half circle of broken walls stood on the edge of a cliff. On the beach below, the corners of huge stones emerged from nearly two hundred years’ worth of sand and driftwood as if they were swimmers just coming up from a dive. Jav had found the box with the the obsidian crystal somewhere among them when they lay clean and exposed to the open air. If any dweomer objects lay in the sand now, they were too well-buried for her to sense. The remains of the tower wall, however, still stood on the cliff edge.
Some hundred yards west, Valandario found a rivulet of fresh water digging itself a channel through the grass. It slithered rather than cascaded down the cliff face, then lost itself in the sand, but up on top it ran deep and clean enough for drinking. She unloaded her stock, watered them, and set them out to graze, then walked over to the tower. The half circle of wall, gray stone mottled here and there with green moss, stood to a height of about ten feet.
Ancient, broken, gutted by Time and sea storms—still the remaining stones gave out a peculiar energy. Val felt it as a tingling in the air and smelled it as the clean sharp aftermath of lightning. Someone had worked dweomer in this tower, someone powerful enough that the traces had lingered for over a thousand years. She ran her fingers along one flat stone, about five feet above the ground and set next to what seemed to have been a doorway. Under the moss she felt deep-carved runes, still readable by touch.
“Lords of Aethyr!” she called out. “Grant me your protection in your temple!”
She felt their answer as a cold ripple down her back. The lightning-scent intensified around her. She stepped through the doorway and looked down. The grassy ground fell away some ten feet from the threshold. How far it would be safe to go was debatable.
“Lords of Aethyr! My thanks to you!”
Valandario turned and walked back out to ordinary ground. That evening she took one of the long sticks from her canvas lean-to and consecrated it as a ritual staff. She wanted to test the footing before she trusted her weight to the cliff edge.
In the morning, once the tide of Aethyr ran strong out on the etheric, Valandario stuffed the black crystal down the front of her tunic. She took her sword in her left hand and the staff in her right and walked back to the tower door. After a brief invocation to the powers of Aethyr, she stepped over the threshold and felt the etheric forces gathering around her. By tapping with the staff, she determined that she could safely walk some three feet in.
She laid the staff down and with the sword slashed a circle out of the tall grass, just a small one, perhaps two feet across. She took the black crystal and placed it in the center, then picked up her staff again. She’d barely begun the ritual invocations when she saw a glimmering point of turquoise light appear above it.
“Be welcome in the name of the Light!”
The point expanded to a circle and changed to a pale lavender. The circle extended itself into a shimmering silver cylinder, some ten feet tall. Within the smokelike interior another turquoise point appeared and gleamed, then swelled itself into a vaguely manlike shape, glowing with white light. The King of Aethyr himself had deigned to appear.
With a swing of her arm, Valandario used the staff to sketch out the sigils of Aethyr. The sword she laid crosswise at her feet. The King acknowledged her with a nod.
“Have you brought this crystal back to us?” The thought came to her mind as a chorus of voices, not a single voice, even though a single figure floated inside the pillar.
“I have,” Val said. “I believe it has been consecrated in your name.”
“You are correct in that. We shall retrieve the shadow, for that is what this black stone is, and reunite it with its true self.