Gerin spread the fingers of his left hand and trapped Tyne in a Binding. He could see Tyne's arms snap to his sides as he closed his fist to contract the spell's power.

The dragons lowered their heads and blasted him with fire.

The spell called Tocca's Mirror caught the fire and reflected it back toward its source. The dragons thrashed and reared back as the streams of fire rushed at them. For a moment the attack halted.

The dragonfire was strong enough to disintegrate the mirror, but the spell held long enough to protect Gerin from the flames. The air became scorching hot, searing his lungs with each breath. Sweat broke out all over his body, spurred by the sudden heat as well as his exertions. It dripped into his eyes, making it hard to see.

He fashioned a Grasping and used his right hand to hurl the spell's power toward Tyne. Gerin could see the thin thread of magic fly out from his fingers. It took all of his concentration to keep his spells in place.

The dragons recovered from their shock at having their fire directed back at them. They spread their wings in anger and roared so loud and deep that Gerin could feel it in his bones.

The Grasping found and latched onto the Commanding Stone just as the dragons unleashed their fire for a second time. The Forbiddings held, but in moments would collapse. The air grew so hot Gerin thought he would black out. He could not draw a breath. It felt as if the fire were sucking all the air from the world.

He used his fading strength to draw back the Grasping. The Commanding Stone flew from Tyne's hand, encased in a coc.o.o.n of Gerin's magic.

The Stone slammed into his palm just as the Forbiddings collapsed.

Gerin threw himself backward as the dragonfire blasted through the last of his defenses. The heat was searing, agonizing. Flames licked across his body as he rolled backward down the slope. He could smell his hair burning and smacked at it wildly with his free hand.

Then the fire stopped.

The air remained witheringly hot. He had squeezed his eyes shut just before the Forbiddings collapsed, and now forced them open.

The dragons were sitting back on their haunches, their wings flexing in agitation. They seemed to be looking at him.

Gerin sat up and burned his hand on the scorched ground. He drew it back quickly and swore. The gra.s.s around him had been set on fire in places, and he moved to get away from the flames. Each breath he took hurt. He began to cough, which made his chest hurt even more.

The Binding holding Tyne remained intact. Gerin reached out toward the stranger standing beside Tyne with a Sensing, but the spell's power found nothing. As if he were no more than a mirage or illusion.

Where the stranger had been standing, Gerin caught a glimpse of something monstrous-a creature enfolded in leathery wings with a lizardlike tail lashing about behind it. It was wreathed in an almost living smoke that swirled around it in thick black tendrils.

Then it was gone.

Gerin looked down at the Stone in his hand. "What have we here?" he said quietly.

44.

Gerin started up the hill toward Tyne, skirting by a wide margin the scorched and burning ground the dragonfire had washed over. The other boy was dead. He'd taken the full force of the dragonfire; there was little left except blackened bones and burned tatters of flesh.

The skin of Gerin's face and hands was painful to touch. His hair was brittle; some of it broke off and turned to ash when he ran his fingers through it.

His left leg gave out when he'd covered about half the distance to Tyne. He knelt on the ground, trying to draw a full breath, and waited for some strength to return. In the distance he heard Balandrick and Hollin running toward him, shouting his name.

He pushed himself to his feet and staggered the rest of the way up the slope. The Binding was still holding Tyne, but just barely. Once Hollin arrived, he would have the other wizard take over.

The dragons watched him but made no other movements. He could feel a power in the Commanding Stone, not unlike the power he felt in Naragenth's staff. He sensed a faint connection between the Stone and the dragons. He did not understand it and did not have the strength to probe it. That would have to wait.

His plan had been based on a faulty premise. He had hoped to take the Stone from Tyne and use it to Command the dragons himself. That, he now realized, was impossible. It would take time to learn to use the Stone.

But he'd been lucky. Apparently, mere physical possession of the Stone was enough to halt the attack against him. Perhaps there was some kind of imperative built into the Stone that prevented the dragons from harming it. There was no way to know until they could study it more.

Whatever the reason, it had saved his life.

Tyne's struggles against the Binding had caused him to lose balance and fall to the ground.

"You're younger than I thought you'd be," Gerin said. He wheezed when he spoke, and his voice was raspy. It sounded old and worn to his own ears.

He shifted the Binding so Tyne could speak. "Let me go!" he shrieked. "Give me back the Stone! It's mine! Mine! You have no right to it!" He spoke with a thick, Middle Plains accent.

"You'll never get this back, I'm afraid." Gerin knelt in the trampled gra.s.s. The looming presence of the dragons unnerved him a little. He concentrated on the Stone, bent all his thoughts and will toward it. Go away. Join the others for now. Feed or rut or do whatever it is dragons do, but leave us.

A sharp pain jabbed through his skull. He felt...something...travel through the connection to the dragons, a sliver of a thought perhaps, an echo of his command. The dragons stirred restlessly, like deer spooked by the scent of a hunter. Then one of them roared, a throaty noise with a surprisingly complex series of inflections.

The dragons leaped into the air, spread their wings and took flight. The wind of their pa.s.sing cooled Gerin's burned skin.

"There, that's better." He turned his gaze back toward the young man. "What did you want with me, Tyne Fedron? I don't believe we've ever met."

"You called a demon that killed my brother, that's why!" He let loose a mindless howl of rage. "Let me go! The G.o.ds d.a.m.n you, let me go!"

Gerin was too exhausted to get angry. He also couldn't raise his voice if he wanted to. Every swallow was painful.

"I don't believe I've ever called a demon. Certainly not in Helcarea, which seems to be your home. I've never been there. So I don't see how I could have done what you claimed."

"It was you! I know it! You called the bronze-skinned demon from its barrow and it killed my brother! He told me!"

A painful chill swept across Gerin's skin. The Vanil? Could that be what he's talking about?

He decided to address that possibility later. "Who is the one that told you? Was it that creature who appeared beside you? Who is he? What is he?"

Tyne clamped his mouth shut.

"No matter. We have means of discovering what we need to know."

"I swear I'll kill you."

"Perhaps. But not today."

Hollin fashioned a new Binding on Tyne Fedron, then worked several healing spells on Gerin's skin and lungs. "I can't do much about your scorched hair," he said. "But don't worry, it should grow back just fine."

Between his exhaustion and the effect of the healing spells, Gerin could not finish the return to Hethnost without Balandrick's help. He slung his arm over his captain's shoulders and allowed him to carry the bulk of his weight.

Unconsciousness tugged mercilessly at him as they pa.s.sed through the wreckage of the Hammdras.

"I'm glad your plan worked," said Balan, his voice thick with emotion. "I thought for sure you were dead when those dragons blasted you."

Gerin nodded. "So did I."

Over the next week, they pieced together most of the story of how Tyne Fedron had found the Commanding Stone. It seemed he was indeed driven by a l.u.s.t for revenge against the Vanil that Gerin had inadvertently awakened from its millennia-long slumber when he fashioned Nimnahal. Somehow, when Tyne was driven into Nirovai Deep by a band of Aidrel's more bloodthirsty followers, he'd stumbled across the resting place of the Stone.

"He claims the Stone called out to him," said Hollin after a long session questioning their prisoner. They were in the relatively intact manor house of the Archmage. "That it showed him its resting place and where to dig to find it."

"That fits with what we've learned of the Stone so far," said Kirin. "There is an ent.i.ty alive within it."

They had no idea what the ent.i.ty was or how it had been confined. They also discovered they had no means of harming the Stone. No spell, no hammer, no fire could so much as scratch it.

"If it survived the Last Battle of the Doomwar, it can probably survive anything," said Gerin.

The creature that had appeared with Tyne on the ridge troubled them all. Tyne told them its name was Drexos and that it was a divine servant of a G.o.d it would not name.

"A counterpart to Zaephos, perhaps," said Hollin.

"That sniveling little whelp said that this Drexos fiend is the one who told Tyne you'd killed his brothers," Balandrick said to Gerin. "I guess it's true since there's no other way he could know about you and the Vanil. But why was the creature after you?"

"Zaephos told me that the Adversary was growing in the world much faster than expected," said Gerin. "Maybe I'm a threat to him, and this was his way of getting rid of me."

"You truly have a knack for drawing unwanted attention," said Balandrick.

Epilogue.

Gerin stared at the Commanding Stone, which rested on a velvet pillow that in turn was perched upon the Archmage's council table. The only light in the room came from a magefire lamp atop a tall decorative stand. It was early morning. The sun had not yet climbed above the eastern hills, though a diffuse, rosy glow was growing behind the gauzy curtains.

He heard footsteps in the hall, and the door open behind him. He recognized Nyene's scent before he saw her.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm wondering about the similarities between the Stone and Naragenth's staff." He tilted his head toward the staff, leaning in the corner.

He spoke softly. Hollin and Kirin had worked more healing spells on his skin and lungs, but his vocal cords had not taken as well to the spells and still felt raw.

"Then your eyesight is failing. One is a round jewel. The other is a long black stick."

He smiled. "The similarity of their power, not their shape. I used to want to do something like that to my sword. Make it alive, so it recognized me when I held it, or rejected anyone else who tried to use it."

She sat down beside him. "A worthy goal."

"Maybe. But not one I'm likely to achieve. I don't think it's possible to imbue an object with intelligence without causing far more harm than it's worth. To do such a thing to my sword, I'd have to sacrifice someone and force their mind into it. That's a price I'm not willing to pay."

"I'm surprised to find such compa.s.sion in a king. Certainly there is none in the stone heart of Threndellen's monarch."

They were silent for a time. Finally, she asked another question.

"Can you see the creature your wizards say lives in that thing?" She pointed at the Stone. The skepticism in her voice was obvious.

"No, I can't see it. But it's there. The more I hold the Stone, the more I can feel it. Whatever's in there, it's insane with rage."

"Yet your staff is not, if you are to be believed."

"I think that whatever's in the Stone was never a human being. It's something far more powerful and dangerous."

Gerin heard footsteps in the hall and immediately recognized Balandrick's long, heavy stride. Balan gave Nyene a knowing look as he came around the table.

"May I join you, Your Highness?"

"Of course, Balan. Sit."

The captain pointed to the Stone. "Have you decided what you're going to do with that yet? As much as I don't like the dragons, they would come in pretty handy against the Havalqa."

"I don't know."

"Bah," said Nyene. "It's a weapon, nothing more, and should be used against your enemies. Anything else is folly."

Balandrick craned his neck to look out the window toward the brightening sky.

"If I may ask, Your Highness, what's next for us?"

He thought of Elaysen and the medicines she needed. He wanted her whole again. Everything else could wait.

"We're going home."

Glossary and p.r.o.nunciation Guide.

The p.r.o.nunciation guide included in this glossary is in no way intended to be absolute, especially where Kelarin is concerned, which was a language of diverse regional dialects, accents, and vocabulary. The p.r.o.nunciations of Kelarin words given here reflect the speech of central Khedesh, where in later years these accounts were compiled. For reasons of clarity and brevity, alternative p.r.o.nunciations, even when they are known, are not included.

Osirin poses less of a difficulty since by Gerin's time it had long been a "dead" language and therefore mostly immune to the kinds of changes in vocabulary and p.r.o.nunciation that affect a language used in everyday speech. The forms of Osirin had been fixed for centuries and had changed little since the time of the Empire, when it ceased its widespread use. Osirin became a largely ceremonial language, used by wizards in their rituals and spellmaking but for little else, not even record-keeping (at least not consistently), and even in Hethnost centuries had pa.s.sed since it had been used for daily intercourse.

An accent after a syllable indicates stress (af'ter).