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

us with a mere touch.  I’d think it’s fair to say I don’t like him very well.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“What you...”

“I don’t want to go back.”  Christopher said it plainly, emphatically.

Although Simon half-expected this was what his friend had been thinking, he felt slapped by the words as they were spoken.  “You don’t mean that,” he managed to say.

Christopher’s eyes bore into his own, ringed and hollow.  “I was unhappy there.  It wasn’t the drink, you know.  Mama made such a fuss about it with you and Papa never had the strength to deal with it.  I felt there was no one who understood me.”

“I understood you.”

“Did you?  Yes, I can see how you thought that.  You wanted to take care of me...but you had your new friends and you disapproved of mine.”

“For God’s sake, Chris, they were hopeless.”  “I didn’t mean that,” he added quickly.

“Yet you said it.  Were they quite as bad as that?  Possibly they were.  But they were like me.”  His expression was wounded, self-pitying, enough of the Christopher of old to cause Simon to start.  The unspoken knowledge lay between them: you were beyond help, a lost cause, and I only made it worse by my involvement.  The fact that you made me feel guilty about it only tightened the noose strands of a twisted friendship.

Compare that to where he was now, it was no wonder he was reluctant to go back, whatever dangers presented themselves here.  Simon considered what he was about to say next.  Everything depended on it, and if he misspoke, his plan would fall apart in the knowledge that he might well have to spend the remainder of his life in this place.  He thought about it and decided and spoke the only words that would get Christopher to return.

“Can you help me?” he asked.

16.

They drew the green fire in the chamber in which they had entered Fein Mor.  This time, Simon held the sticks of the Drey torch, drawing one broken piece against another.  Green flame shimmered in a brow that circled the ends of the broken sticks, and an image of the temple sprang before them.  There were the by now familiar white pillars that stretched impossibly high and ranged in number as far as they could see.  The green fire throbbed and pulsated with an almost tidal force, drawing the Englishmen toward it, and, as before, they were nearly swallowed in its pull.

Steadying himself on the chamber floor, Christopher turned to Simon and asked “what do we do now?”

“We look for the Brightsphere.”

“Yes, but how?”

Simon shifted his stance, moving to the right and then left.  The image, however, did not change.  It continued to project the same part of the temple it had shown upon being summoned.  He tried calling out the name of the Brightsphere with the same result.  He called its name in his mind and again nothing happened.

“Try turning the stick,” Christopher suggested.  “Rotate it like a gimbal.”

He did so, turning one part of the Drey torch with his right hand, and the other with his left, then both together, yet the image always remained static.

He turned to Christopher.  “It’s no good, I can’t search for it.  It could be we’d have to enter the temple to find it.”

“That’s no choice.  We’d be lost there forever.”  “Give me one of the sticks,” he said on impulse.

Simon did so and immediately the picture before them shifted, rolling left where Christopher had grasped and turned the stick.

“That’s it!  I love it.  It recognises that there’re two of us seeking the Brightsphere.  We can call out its name now.”

“We don’t need to.  Look.  It’s moving of its own accord!”

The white pillars spun past their eyes in a rapid flash, proceeding in a straight line, then weaving, snake-like between the columns, cutting diagonally then straight once more, the Englishmen unable to follow the sequence, its passage lost in a swift blur of movement.  They stood there as it travelled for what seemed long minutes.  When it finally stopped they found they were looking at a clearing in the temple devoid of pillars.

In the centre of the clearing something was taking shape.  Lines of power extended from the floor, converging to assemble a solid mass.  Embers flew and hissed as the wellspring of something monstrous stirred to life, cloaked in molten heat, cooling in the thaw of the temple.  It peered past the boundaries of the temple, through the green fire at the Englishmen who had summoned it.  It called to them in a voice that was unnatural to their ears, a sound from another age.  Simon remembered Daaynan telling him that it was not human but an elemental, a facsimile of human life possessing power that dwarfed ordinary understanding: power to alter life, to enrich or destroy it. Within its molten core shimmered an iridescent figure.  When it spoke, they could see its lambent mouth and eyes that moved over their own.

“Who are you?” it asked.

“I,” Simon began, “...at least we...are friends of the Druid.”

“I told him not to contact me further.”

Christopher spoke, “it’s because of him we are here.  He’s dying here in the...in Fein Mor, and he needs our help to survive.”

“You are using the Druid’s magic.”  It paused.  “He summoned you from another world.  I am familiar with it.  You want my help to go back there and I cannot give it.”

“Please,” Simon said, “we can’t stay in this place.  It’s not our natural home.  If you can’t help us yourself at least show us how we can revive Daaynan.”

The figure inside the Brightsphere studied them for a long moment.  “Only one of you wants to go back, is that not so?  The Druid has all the skills he needs to survive.  Perhaps he can help you.”

“But he’s dying!”

“That is not so.  His power is mixing with that of the one who attacked him.  It will take time for this to be completed.  Perhaps he will help you when it is finished.  Do