I shivered, for in that moment, my ghostly friend, I think my soul caught a glimpse of the future. Then I too slept.
I awoke in the night to find a cool breeze whispering across the mouth of the cave, bringing with it the stealthy sounds of men moving through the undergrowth. Reaching out I touched Megan lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes opened and, in the moonlight, she saw me touch my fingers to my lips, warning her to keep silent.
Dropping to my stomach I wormed my way to the cave-mouth, peering out at the silhouetted trees. At first I saw nothing, but then the dark figure of a soldier, his breastplate gleaming in the eldritch light, edged forward. He was joined by another . . . and another. The first knelt, his pale hand extending down to the ground, tracing a line. Then he took a shining object from the pouch at his side and laid it on the ground. Immediately a faint blue-white light sprang up from the track. I swallowed hard, realizing that Megan and I had walked from that direction and feeling instinctively that the hunter was examining a footprint, mine or Megan’s, and he was carrying a Search-stone.
The cave itself was partly screened by thick bushes, but in the bright moonlight there was no hope of the entrance escaping the keen eyes of the hunters.
It is a fearful thing to be hunted, but it is doubly unmanning during the hours of night. I don’t know why this should be so, save to note that our most primal fears are of the dark. Moonlight, though beautiful, is cold and unearthly. Nothing grows by moonlight, but all is revealed.
I glanced up, praying for clouds and total darkness, an all-covering blanket of black that would shield us from the soldiers. But almost immediately my fears welled anew and I imagined the hunters, aided by the Search-stone, creeping forward purposefully within that darkness, unseen and deadly, their cold blades seeking my heart. No, I prayed again. No darkness. Please!
I was trembling now, but Megan’s hand came down upon my arm, gripping my wrist, then patting the skin. I glanced towards her and licked my dry lips with a drier tongue.
‘Fear not,’ she whispered. ‘They will not see us.’ Extending her
hand she pointed at the leading soldier. He cried out and dropped the stone, which fell to the earth and blazed with a fierce light, causing the soldiers to shield their eyes. Leaning her back against the cave wall, Megan gestured with her right hand. The entrance shimmered and, as I looked towards the soldiers, it seemed I was viewing them through a screen of water.
Slowly they approached the rock wall. There were some twenty of them gathered now, lean and wolflike, swords in their hands. They halted some few feet before us, scanned the ground, then moved on.
After a while there was silence beyond the cave.
‘What did you do?’ I ventured at last.
‘Think through your fear, Owen,’ she advised. ‘Do not let it master you. The illusion is no more than you could have achieved. Any man who can create the Dragon’s Egg should find little difficulty in displaying a wall of rock where there is none.’I felt foolish then, for she was right. The rock-face was dark; it would take little skill to cast an image across the cave-mouth, and the soldiers had been half-blinded by the destruction of the stone.
‘But I could not have destroyed their stone,’ I pointed out defensively.
‘No,’ she agreed, ‘that you could not do. Azrek has a powerful magus at his side, and I think you will need my . . . skills before this game is played out.’What you did was sorcery,’ I said softly. ‘No trick with light and gentle heat. You burned a stone to dust and ash.’I am allied to no dark powers, Owen. Sorcery and magick are not as far removed from one another as you would like to believe. Magick is – as you rightly say, merely tricks with light, illusions. But sorcery is a different kind of… trick. All I did with the stone was to create enormous heat. It is not difficult, it is merely a more powerful variation of the Warming spell.’How is it done?’ I asked her.