“No, Lady. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk about you behind your back.”
“There is no need to be sorry.” Her mouth quirked up at the corner. “The bards sing the tale in every tavern in the North, I understand. The price of fame is having your story told over and over by strangers.”
“I’m sorry,” Wiz said again.
“Perhaps you would like to hear the story as it happened?”
“We do not wish to pain you, Lady.” Moira said.
Shiara chuckled, a harsh, brittle sound. “My child, the pain is in the loss. There is little enough ain in the telling.” She seated herself in her chair by the fireplace. “Sometimes it even helps to repeat it.”
Moira sat down on the bench. “Then yes, Lady, we would like to hear the story, if you do not mind.”
“I’ve never heard it, Lady,” Wiz said, sitting down as close to Moira as he could without being too obvious about it. Moira shifted slightly but did not get up.
“Well then,” Shiara smoothed out the folds in her skirt and settled back. “We were powerful in those days,” she said reminiscently. “My hair was white even then and Cormac, ah, Cormac’s hair was as yellow as fine gold.”
“And he was strong,” Moira put in breathlessly. “The strongest man who ever lived and the best, bravest swordsman in all the North.”
“Not as strong as the storytellers say,” Shiara said. “But yes, he was strong.”
“And handsome? As handsome as they say?”
Shiara smiled. “No one could be that handsome. But he was handsome. I called him my sun, you know.”
Ugo entered unnoticed with a bundle of wood and set about kindling a fire.
Seven
Shiara’s Story
Shiara sensed the boy and girl looking up at her. Young, Shiara thought, so very young. Convinced the world is full of hope and possibilities and so blind to the truth. She felt the warmth of the fire on her face and turned her head to spread the heat. Then she sighed and began the old, old tale.
“Once upon a time, there was a thief who loved a rogue . . .”
Cormac, tall and strong with his corn-ripe hair caught back by a simple leather filet. He had doffed his leather breeks and linen shirt and stood only in his loin cloth. The fire turned his tan skin ruddy and highlighted the planes and hollows of his muscles. The scars stood out vividly on his torso and legs.
“Well, Light. Do we know what the thing is?”
Shiara shook her head and the motion made her tresses ripple. The highlights in her hair danced from the flames and the motion.
“Only that it is powerful—and evil. An evil that can shake the World.”
“Mmmfph,” Cormac grunted and turned back to his sword. Again he checked the leather cords on the hilt, running his fingers over them for any sign of looseness or slickness that might make the sword slip in his hand. “And it lies above us, you say?”
Shiara nodded. “In a cave well above the tree line this thing sleeps.” She bit her lip. “It sleeps uneasily and I do not like to think what it might become when it awakens.”
“And we must either possess it or destroy it.” He shook his head. “It’s an awful way to make a living, Light.”
“Terrible for two such honest tradesfolk,” she agreed, falling into the well-worn game.
The thief had been very, very good. With skill, cunning, carefully arrayed magic and a good element of luck he had managed to penetrate the crypt beneath the Capital where the most dangerous treasures of the Council were stored.
In the end it had not been the Council that had caught him. When the vault’s magic detectors screamed and guards and wizards came rushing to investigate, they found the thief already dead, his throat torn out by the guardian the original owner had set upon the thing he had come to steal.
The object of the daring raid had been a chest imprisoning a demon of the sixth order, a thing powerful enough but not so unusual as to attract the close scrutiny of the Mighty The real treasure was in the hidden drawer in the bottom of the chest. What the compartment contained was well worth scrutiny.