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

Steward onto the floor of a vast room made of flagstone rock.  At one end of the room stood a closed door made of heavy oak, joined to the edging with large metal hinges.  He cast the torch about, illuminating the shade and as he did so a thin, short figure detached itself from a shadowed corner to the right of the door wearing a dark blue broad-cloak, its hood lowered to reveal the wearer’s face.  He recognised the aquiline nose, the sunken cheeks, the cruel twisting mouth.  But most of all the eyes: placid on the surface, yet alive with some deviant intelligence beneath.

“Tan,” the Steward acknowledged.  “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough to wonder if you were coming at all, my Lord,” Tan Wrock said, the words giving lie to the respectful, oddly formal tone he used whenever addressing the Steward.  Was that how he always talked, Longfellow wondered?  At home, relaxing with friends, unwinding with a pitcher of ale?  He smiled to himself at his private joke.  Perhaps, he mused, Wrock would not look so cheerless if he had a friend or two.  “I am sorry for that,” he said without sincerity, “but there were items I needed to handle before coming here that took me longer than expected.”

“Is the matter involving the Vice-Steward dealt with?” Wrock asked.

“He’s on my side, for now.  Later, I can’t tell.  Are you ready for this business?”

“I am.”  Wrock stepped forward in front of the door.  Near one of its hinges was a metal pad on which there was a combination of brass studs.  You needed to press the studs in a particular sequence to open the door.  Only Longfellow knew the code.  He motioned Wrock to stand aside, then approached the door, pressing the sequence of buttons, cupping his free hand over the pad so Wrock couldn’t see what he was doing.

“One day you might tell me the combination,” Wrock said.

Longfellow finished the sequence and turned to the other man.  “I might remind you, Tan, that what lies beyond this door is for the ruler of Brinemore alone.  A secret passed down from one Steward to the next.  I’m both doing you a service and breaking convention by letting you in here.”

“Doing me a service?  And what of that which you want from me, the reason you bring me down here?  Maybe I should leave you alone with these monsters, let you impose your will on them yourself.  See how far you get.”

Longfellow acknowledged this with a curt nod.  “It’s true, I need you for this.”  Perhaps only for this last time, he smiled inwardly.  And as far as monsters go, I’m alone with you and I haven’t fared too badly.

He pushed the door open and they stepped in to another chamber half the size of the adjoining one.  The walls of this room were significantly different, the rock they were hewn from protruding from them like jagged teeth, the individual stones coarse and serrated and grimed with dirt.  There was an unpleasant smell coming from somewhere behind the rock, entering the chamber like a reeking haze from gaps between the stones.  Longfellow wrinkled his nose in distaste while Tan Wrock merely snorted.  “This place is like a death-vault.  It looks worse every time.”

Longfellow closed the door and walked to the centre of the room, facing the wall opposite the entrance, gesturing Wrock to stand slightly to one side.  Their movements carried an oft rehearsed familiarity, telling an observer they had visited here on many occasions.  Longfellow stood in the mid-point of the chamber for some time without moving or speaking.  Then, he lifted his arms, bowed and spoke, directing both limbs and voice toward the wall.

“Ledislas, make yourself known!  Come to me, creator.  I have need of you once again.”

Wrock looked on impassively, thinking- probably correctly- that the gesture and incantation were not strictly needed, other than to contribute to the Steward’s need for theatricality, but the spirit of the thing was valid, as he had witnessed several times before.

“Ledislas, come forth!” Longfellow commanded.

The air in the chamber seemed to shimmer abruptly and Wrock and the Steward were suddenly looking through the wall- past it- at a strange light that rose from the depths of the cavernous space beneath the tower.  It was almost completely black, its sole illumination a thin iridescent outline of a figure that shifted at its centre.  It wore its dark surroundings like shadowy robes that rippled around its form as it moved.  The surroundings, the odd light, formed a perfect circle, growing in mass and size until it filled half the room.  It stopped at the feet of the Steward who, like Tan Wrock, never once retreated or even flinched.  The figure inside it considered the two men, its eyes barely delineated planes of light- thin and level- that slid back and forth between them before coming to rest on Longfellow, the being directing most of its attention on the Steward.  Wrock, observing this from a close distance, contrived to look bored, yet his eyes never once left the figure.  Karsin knew it as Ledislas, and the cocoon that housed it was called the Darksphere.  It was an ancient construct, he understood, made of an ephemeral material unknown in this age, designed to protect a spirit whose history was said to trace back to before the beginning of recorded time, before even the age of Faerie itself.  Wrock understandably knew little of this period and cared for it less.  What mattered was that he could not control such a being.  Its mind, or the closest thing it had to a mind, was too powerful, or too dissimilar.  What it produced, on the other hand- wherever it got them from- could be influenced and this interested Tan Wrock more than knowing, for example, how the Stewards managed to tame a creature such as this.  If he had reflected on it, he would probably have concluded that the being inside the Darksphere obeyed Longfellow out