The Steward and the Sorcerer by James Peart (small books to read .TXT) 📗

flared once more, coating the skeleton in its light, animating the King, cloaking him in its red haze.

Daaynan stared.

The King had eyes where a moment ago he did not.  They opened and looked up at him and there was enough living in that regard to cause him to step back in surprise.  They were yellowed with age, their pupils flat and wide like those of a cat.  Whatever it had drawn from the sun, it could clearly replicate life, although he doubted it was of the human variety.  There was now skin covering its entire frame.  He supposed that was what it was.  It looked like a translucent membrane tightly sketched over its bones, thin yet strong, he somehow thought.

It, or he, turned from Daaynan and with a casual motion of one hand indicated his body and the remains of the palace.  “Did you do this?” he asked.

“It was done for me,” he replied.  Not quite a lie.

The King stood up, pushing aside the chair he sat in, and considered him.  At well over six and a half feet, he was nearly as tall as Daaynan.  “Are you a magician?”

“Of a kind.  I need...help with someone.  This individual lives in another world.  The magic I used to find the help I need carried me here, to this place.”

The King, if that was what he was, absorbed this slowly.  “You’re not telling me everything.  Are you from this person’s world?”

“I am.”

“Then you must have employed some very powerful magic to carry you here.”

“What is this place?”

The King gestured at their surroundings once again.  It was a lazy action and one Daaynan did not care for.  There was more animation in his face now, the veins and muscles beneath his skin apparent, pulsing and stretching in regular cadence.  He saw an arrogant expression cross his features, a look underpinning a self-importance that seemed somehow permanent.

“This is where I govern.  Everything that you can see and more besides, much more.”

“There are more...buildings...here?”

“Far more than a year’s travel would have you see.  What manner of magician are you?”

“I am a Druid.  I study history and philosophy and care for the people in my charge.”

“That is not the question I asked.  How did you bring me to life once more?”

“My magic is sometimes of a general nature.  In this case, I left many of the details in its summoning to its own device.”

“Not the complete truth, I would guess.  Still, you need my help.  I will grant it on one condition.”

“What would that be?”

“That you assist me in turn, of course.”  He outstretched his right hand, one of the fingers on which held a gold signet ring.  “Reach out and hold my hand in yours.”

Daaynan stood where he was, unmoving.  “What are you asking of me?  Who are you?”

“I am the Raja Iridis.  I am the ruler of this world and everything in it.  That you come from someplace else matters little.  You were born to swear on an oath that you will promise fealty to me and me alone.”

He gave the other a look of cool assessment.  “What if I don’t?”

“Touch me, Druid, and find out,” Iridis said in response but he was already moving toward Daaynan, reaching for his face.

Daaynan reacted at a speed that an observer would have found difficult to follow.  One moment he was situated halfway down the length of the King’s table, the next he was standing on the plinth and had pressed the last button in the sequence of three.  A fraction of a moment later and the being that called itself Iridis would have caught the Druid’s robing and pulled him close.  What happened instead was that a fantastic burst of light caught both of their forms and the world of the red star disappeared from both of their visions and they felt pulled- no, wrenched- from the palace and into the world between worlds once again (for Daaynan, at least).

Daaynan felt a familiar heat, like a rash against his skin.  When it subsided, as he expected it to, the surrounds of the temple asserted themselves into his view.  He looked around and saw nothing but columns of light.  He noted the stains he had made on the four pillars, one of which was arrowed, the point of which directed him back the way he had originally come.

The stained column opposite the column with the arrowed stain was the one he had walked through.  He walked back from this now, searching for that other, his hands raised, ready to summon fire, yellow to attack.  He found him not three feet from the pillar that led into the dying world from which he had been taken.  He was lying on the temple floor, apparently spent of force, of no seeming threat to anyone.  His eyes were half-lidded, his breathing laboured and uneven, seemingly only partially aware of his surroundings.  Daaynan remembered how this place could drain your life-force, if you did not have sufficient protection.  He himself had use of the somnolent veil, the pink flame that brought about sleep yet also guarded against attack.  He would have need of it here.

It did not bother him that he had brought Iridis into the temple against his will.  He knew it was a rationalisation but he had breathed life into the King.  Even if he hadn’t he would not have worried about interfering with the will of such a man.  He had an idea that the buttons on the columns of light were meant to bring individuals who lives had come to an end in some way.  Indeed, here the subject’s whole world was about to finish.  But to take others presented a moral question.  Iridis had been about to attack him, or do something he feared was far worse, though he could but speculate on what that might have been.  Would he rob the life of others?  How many would he take?  Two?  Three?  How many would be enough?  There were other ways he could enlist help, he