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

route the Druid had taken them the other day.  Finally, they stopped before the entryway to a room that was much like the one they had materialised in upon leaving the temple, Simon noticing the extra light here that had no discernible origin.  He raked his boot over the stone threshold, looking at Christopher.

“This is it.  This is where he took us and where Iridis attacked him and left him for dead.”

Christopher peered into the chamber, inspecting its contents.  “It looks gothic.”

“Don’t you remember it?”

He creased his brow, then said “the Druid’s not here.”

“Well done constable.  Now, where d’you think he’s got to?  He couldn’t have gone far, not in the state Iridis left him.”

They walked into the chamber and across it to a door at the other side.  Past it was yet another cavernous network of rooms and corridors leading in other directions to different points of the keep, a labyrinth into which they had fled from the King, hastily selecting a route and negotiating its many twists and turns.

Christopher sighed and was about to march forward again when the other Englishman stilled him.

“There, behind that statue!”

To their right, standing in the shadow of an alcove, was an effigy of a goddess.  One of her arms was raised, her hands clenched into a loose fist and around it was carved a flame.  In her other hand she carried a tablet inscribed with numbers in writing so small it was indecipherable.  Her hair was braided into thick ropes in a style much like the Furies’ outside the keep.  At the foot of the sculpture, lying almost prone, was the collapsed form of the Druid Daaynan.

Christopher pointed at the statue, on the point of saying something, when Simon, crouched beside the sorcerer’s body, waved him over.

“He’s unconscious.  Help me bring him about!”

They attempted to do this in turn, one of them pressing his hands down on Daaynan’s chest while the other breathed into his mouth.  After a time, when they could see this wasn’t working, Simon had the idea of searching through the Druid’s robing for medicaments or healing salves.  They found some glass vials in an inner pocket holding coloured liquids and sealed with cork stoppers.  Simon was afraid to use them as they could have made his condition worse, not better.  Even should they be medicine of some kind, they knew neither the dosage nor the mixture that needed to be administered.  After a long time spent arguing over whether they should move the sorcerer and the merits of blind experimentation with the liquids contained in the vials, they retreated into the room where they had left Daaynan in his encounter with the Raja Iridis.

“He’s deep under,” Simon said to Christopher.  “He could be in a coma.”

“At least he’s at peace,” Christopher said.  Simon looked at him, trying to discover whether his friend was being sympathetic or was genuinely envious.  Christopher had demonstrated over the past few days that he was alive in ways he had never been at Eton or Cambridge.  He hoped it was sympathy, but Christopher was so maddeningly vague it was hard to know.  Things had been clearer in his drinking days.  Were those behind him now?

“If he is, we need to get him to a doctor or whatever passes for a healer in this land,” Simon pointed out.  “We’re no longer trapped in Fein Mor.”

“We wouldn’t know where to start.  Even if we knew of a place, it could be days away, even on horseback, and the natives may not be friendly.”

“True.  Didn’t Iridis say the steward of Brinemore was expanding his confederation south toward here?  By turning him over to a clinic we might be placing him in enemy hands.”

“So, we go west?”

“We might...” Simon paused as a thought occurred to him, then he slapped his forehead.  “Of course!”

“What?”

“We use his power to get us home.”

“That’s right, Simon,” Christopher said patiently, “that’s why we need to wake him first.”

Simon turned to his friend.  “Where did he get his power from?  Where did he acquire all the advanced knowledge he has?”

“I don’t...”

“The Brightsphere!  The Brightsphere made him what he is.”

“So?”

“So, if we can’t revive him, we go to the source of all that power.  We ask this Brightsphere to take us back.”

“Or,” Christopher said in understanding, “we use its magic to bring Daaynan to life again.”

“...yes.”

“There’s only one problem.”

“We don’t have the means to contact the Brightsphere?”

“Or we don’t even know what it is let alone where to find it.”

Simon gave a wry twist of a grin, nodding at the Drey torch.  “Oh, ye of little faith, when you have the answer right there in your hands.”

“This torch?  But it only leads back to the temple and we’d be lost inside it forever if we went back.”

“Daaynan said the green fire inside it draws matter and energy into your world of origin from another world.”

“Yes?  We’ve been through this before.”

“But our world of origin is effectively the temple as it overrides any other world, including England.”

“And it was the same with Iridis, hence we threatened him with the knowledge.  Where is this getting us?”

“Daaynan told us the Brightsphere also comes from the world between worlds.”

“It lives in the temple?”

“Perhaps.  Perhaps there’s more than one world between worlds.  It could be there’s an infinity of them.  But I think the odds are high that this thing does live in the temple.  And we can summon the temple with the Drey torch.”

“And talk with the Brightsphere!”

“Sound reasoning, Inspector Went.”

“Let’s try it out before Daaynan falls into a permanent coma.”

“If this thing works, Christopher, we may not need the Druid.”

The two Englishmen eyed each other.  Finally, Christopher said “you care for him, I think.”

“Well, let’s review what happened.  He pulled us out of Italy and the world we know and love with no obvious possibility of getting back, with no regard for our safety or wellbeing, and let us fend for ourselves, trapped in a freezing castle with an unhinged monster who had the power to destroy