Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [142]
There was a cunning note in the dry tone that Bronwyn mistrusted. The lich obviously sensed her heritage- perhaps this was a test of her knowledge and worthiness. She answered as truthfully as she could. “My father gave me the ring just before he died in an attack on his fortress. He would want me to use the Fenrisbane to right this wrong.”
The lich nodded avidly, shedding flakes of ancient skin in the process. “Good, good. You have two children of the bloodline, two who are agreed in how to use the rings. That is a needed thing-one person alone cannot fully awaken the Fenrisbane’s magic. Go now, and do.”
Bronwyn was only too glad to obey, but at the wall, she turned back. “The toy shop.”
“Gladestone,” the lich said impatiently. “An old town of elves with long lives and longer memories. Seek out Tintario or his heirs. There is a dweomer on these elves and their shop. They will never sell the Fenrisbane or close the shop. If the need to protect it arises, they will do so or die. See that you do likewise.”
She had one more question, one that she feared to ask. “Who are you? Or, if you prefer, who were you?”
The lich hesitated. Bronwyn got the impression that it was more saddened than aggrieved by this impertinence. “I no longer recall the name I once wore. What I was is lost. What I am now is the Guardian of the Order.” A dry, heavy sound wheezed from the lich, one that might have been a sigh had it come from a living throat. “This puts me in a paradoxical position. Paladins cannot abide undead and would destroy me on sight. For good or ill, few of the paladins and priests in yonder fortress knows who or what inhabits this ancient tower. They simply иonsider it a holy place and are restrained by their order’s edict from disturbing it.”
The lich shook itself, staving off despair as it must have done many times in its long years of undeath. “But now you have come. I entrust the third ring and the Fenrisbane into your care. This I do because you are of the bloodline of Samular, and because I cannot give these things to the paladins for whom they were intended.” The creature darted forward with startling speed and loomed threateningly over Bronwyn.
One bony hand parted the robe. A small black bat flew out from the empty ribcage. The lich paid it no heed, but slipped a tiny scrying globe from an inside pocket of the robe and showed it to her. “I will know what you do,” he said. “Fail, and I will seek you out.”
* * * * *
Cara and Ebenezer spent a pleasant day on the hillside. He taught her to spit for distance and how to hold a knife for whittling. She took to both with gusto and soon had a pile of wood shavings around her feet. Wood chips and toothpicks, the dwarf observed, pretty much average for a first-time whittler.
The girl pestered him for stories, as she had on the ship. Ebenezer had used up most of his best tales, but he didn’t mind telling the second-rate ones. They didn’t tell bad, once he added a bit of gloss and color. While he talked, he whittled away at a toy for her. An orc, she wanted, just like the ones in his stories.
Orcs were much on Ebenezer’s mind. He knew the signs better than he liked. The scuffling big-footed prints, scat that showed small game eaten raw and whole, and the fetid, musty smell that emanated from some of the hidden caves. There would be trouble, of that he was certain. Orcs always meant trouble.
But trouble, when it came, took a very different form. Cara’s soft, sharp intake of breath startled him. She seized his wrist and pointed. “There! See that white horse coming along with the gray dappled? That’s the man who stole me from my farm and chased me in the city.”
Ebenezer strained and squinted, but his eyes weren’t made for distance in the same way the sharp-sighted child’s were. He couldn’t make out the man, but oh, he knew that horse!
“More paladins,” he muttered. “And heading to the keep.” He didn’t like this, not one little bit. His every instinct told him this put Bronwyn in a bad way. But how could he warn her?
Cara whistled sharply.