The Spellstone of Shaltus Read online

  As Leah raised her glass in response, she suddenly gasped. The glass slipped from her fingers, rolled across the table, and spilled wine that stained the tablecloth blood red.

  In that instant the feeling of wrongness welled up and smashed against her like an icy wave. The dark presence she had felt earlier flooded her senses. Now its Shaltus’ origin was unmistakable. Yet it remained strangely different from the Shaltuswraith itself.

  Instinctively focusing her powers through her spellstone to protect herself, she realized that she was feeling only the blacklash of the attack. Her half-brother was its target.

  On the dais, Richard had jerked backward as though he had been struck by a physical blow. The powerstones in his wristlet blazed blue-white in protective response.

  The backlash also hit Barbara. She began to scream.

  A freezing wind rushed through the hall. It snuffed out candles and lanterns, plunging the room into dark chaos.

  Leah shuddered as the backlash of force continued to pound her. Struggling to overcome the paralyzing fear, she pulled out her spellstone and concentrated on it. It reacted sluggishly, finally glowing faintly in response. She sensed that her half-brother was under fierce attack. Instinctively she cast counterspells to aid him, but they seemed to have no effect.

  Pushing past frightened diners trying to escape the room, she headed toward the main table. As she reached the edge of the dais, shadows seemed to pile on shadows around her. She took another step and found herself in an unnatural black maelstrom of magic. Her spellstone was a pinpoint of light.

  When she tried to move she felt as though she were struggling through quicksand that pressed against her face and chest, suffocating her. Gasping, she forced herself forward, using all of her strength to fight the formless evil surrounding her. The room was strangely silent, as though the force blotted out sound as well as light.

  Then she saw the glow of another spellstone in the darkness. She stumbled against the edge of the platform, grabbed hold of one of the legs of the head table, and pulled herself onto the dais.

  As she tripped over an upturned chair, a large hand caught her and pulled her upright. The hand grasped hers in a powerful grip. A spellstone centimeters away blazed blue-white.

  Lips pressed against her ear and shouted words that the Shaltus-force muffled into a whisper. Making out enough to recognize the spell, Leah began to recite it along with him. As she did so the voice grew louder, and her own stone grew brighter until it matched the color and intensity of the other’s stone. She felt a flow of power that pushed back the darkness.

  Then she recognized the man who gripped her hand so tightly. It was Lord Rowen.

  A feeling of urgency stronger than her fear swept over her. She had to reach her half-brother.

  When she tried to free her fingers from Rowen’s grasp, he realized her intention. As she moved forward he followed, still tightly holding onto her hand.

  The center of the disturbance was a black vortex that encircled her half-brother.

  Leah touched the swirling shadows. Her fingers met a rock-hard wall of force. She could sense her half-brother weakening. He would not be able to withstand the Shaltus-force much longer on his own.

  Instinctively she pushed against the barrier with her will. She could not move forward. But the tall sorcerer stepped through.

  Leah remained pressed to the shadow-wall. Her arm extended halfway into it, still clutching Rowen’s left hand. She wondered how he’d overcome the magic.

  The sorcerer reached into the swirling blackness with his other arm and grabbed Richard. Instantly the three of them were linked together. The evil vortex expanded around them.

  The flow of energy increased. The focus was Richard, backed with Rowen’s and Leah’s strength. As the energy flowed through them to Richard, he used it to fight the Shaltus-force.

  For a moment that seemed an eternity Leah felt her strength drain, until she thought she had no more to give. But the pressure of Michael Rowen’s hand on hers seemed to demand more from her, and somehow she continued to channel power to him.

  Suddenly the darkness of an unlighted, enclosed room replaced the unnatural blackness. The suppressed sounds returned in a cacophony of confusion. Leah discovered that she was shouting a power spell in unison with her half-brother and Rowen. With the cessation of the attack their voices broke off abruptly.

  Rowen released Leah’s hand. She raised it to her lips and sucked on the bloody gouges his fingernails had cut. Her own nails had made similar marks on his palm.

  Rowen muttered a spell that rekindled the extinguished candles in the hall’s great chandeliers. It took Leah’s eyes a moment to readjust to light that revealed the wreckage of overturned tables and chairs, spilled food and broken dishes, smashed glasses, and torn hangings.

  Most of the diners and servants were still inside the room. With the return of light they huddled together in confusion. Although they had not been the target of the attack, the use of sorcery terrified them. They did not understand it, they had no defense against it, and they had a superstitious dread of it that magnified their fear.

  Suddenly Leah felt faint. As she swayed, Rowen slid his arm around her waist, and she felt a short surge of strength flow into her.

  A look of mild surprise crossed his face as he noticed her mismatched eyes—one deep brown, one startling turquoise. She saw the look and tried to pull away, also realizing that her cap had been dislodged during the confusion. Her braids were as silver as moonlight. But Rowen took her hand gently, yet firmly, in his and would not let it go.

  “So, you must be Lord S’Carlton’s infamous sister.” His deep gray eyes were warm and friendly. “I thought I’d caught a glimpse of you just before this fracas started. Lady Leandes, isn’t it?”

  She winced at the title and pulled her hand from his grasp, although she sensed that he did not realize the insult.

  “Just Leah.”

  Then she pushed her way past the sorcerer to her half-brother. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He looked pale and exhausted.

  “Richard, are you all right?”

  His eyes focused on her face. He nodded and then grimaced as he realized that she had been the one helping Lord Rowen. Brusquely turning away from her, he searched the platform for Barbara.

  Even though she could have expected no other reaction from Richard, Leah flinched. She wondered if she could ever become indifferent to his hatred. Forcing her face into an impassive mask, she followed Richard’s gaze.

  Barbara lay under an overturned section of the head table. Before Leah could move to aid her half-sister, Michael Rowen touched her arm and gestured that she remain where she was. Then he strode over to the injured girl.

  Barbara had not inherited much of her father’s psychic talents, and she had no spellstone. Thus she had been able to do little to protect herself from the attack. But she was just sensitive enough to be susceptible to its backlash.

  While Richard and Michael Rowen tried to rouse Barbara, Leah turned her attention to the others who had been seated at the head table. Richard’s wife, Mary-Esther, was hysterical but apparently unhurt. She was being comforted by Bishop Merton. He’d evidently been able to protect himself from the side effects of the attack on Richard.

  The bespectacled Timothy Fletcher had tripped and fallen off the platform in the darkness. He sat on the floor nursing a bruised head.

  Rusty, a stocky man of about fifty, was still seated in his chair at the now overturned table. From the redness of his cheeks, nose, and eyes, he’d apparently been enjoying the wine quite a bit during the dinner. Yet his thoughtful, worried expression indicated that the events of the past few minutes had sobered him.

  He noticed Leah’s appraisal and stared back. His pale blue eyes revealed a keen intelligence that his oafish appearance belied. He sauntered over to her, glancing calmly around the room as though unsurprised by the turn of events.

  “Don’t you think you’d better make some expl
anation to these people, miss?” he asked Leah.

  “Me?” She looked nervously at the frightened knots of servants, castle guardsmen, townspeople, and other guests still clustered in the hall. She possessed neither their allegiance nor their respect.

  Knowing that something would have to be said, she crossed to her half-brother, who still knelt at Barbara’s side.

  Leah touched his shoulder. “Lord Rowen and I will get her to her room. You’d better take charge here.” Richard glanced around with a frown.

  Michael Rowen nodded agreement. “I think she’ll be all right. The thing that attacked you will have to rest for a few hours, perhaps a few days, before it regains enough energy to strike again. We’ll have to use that time to rest and to organize a proper defense.”

  “What was it? It was like Shaltus; yet it was not like him. But it couldn’t have been the Shaltuswraith—nothing has the power to reach so far… .” Richard shook his head wearily.

  “I’m certain Shaltus controlled it,” interjected Leah. “If he can attack us at this distance …” As she spoke and realized the implication of the attack, her stomach knotted in fear. The normal range for sorcery was only about five to eight kilometers. The Shaltus spellstone lay some hundred and thirty kilometers to the south.

  “No,” said Lord Rowen decisively. “It was not Shaltus. Not even a wraith has that kind of power. The source of the attack was something inside the castle. It was sent and shaped by Shaltus, but it wasn’t Shaltus himself. And it’s still here.”

  “But what was it?” asked Richard as he rose to his feet.

  “A powerstone programmed by Shaltus and planted here by someone under his control.” Rowen shook his head. “I’ll have to study this situation before I can tell you more.”

  He gestured at his friend. “Rusty, give me a hand with this girl.” As the two men lifted Barbara, the sorcerer asked Leah to show them to her half-sister’s room.

  Leading the way past the still stunned dinner guests, Leah felt the beginnings of the sense of wrongness return. It was greatly diminished, but it was still there. She knew that Lord Rowen had been right—the Shaltus-controlled presence lay hidden within the castle, and it would attack again—soon.

  Two

  “Will she be all right?” asked Leah. She was alarmed by her half-sister’s ashen stillness. Barbara had been only a little kinder to her than Richard since their father’s death, but she was still her sister.

  Although Michael Rowen bent over Barbara, using his spellstone to probe her injuries, it was Rusty who replied.

  “Aye, she’ll come out of it, miss.”

  Surprised by the certainty in his craggy voice, Leah turned to stare at the man. Although his eyes were red-veined and watery from a lifetime of too much alcohol, there was an intensity about them that told of knowledge, wisdom, and pain. They seemed to have seen too much and known too much.

  “You sound sure of it,” she said, studying his face. “I am.” His quiet answer seemed no empty reassurance, but rather an undeniable statement of fact. “Lady Leandes, I need your help.”

  Leah’s cheeks flushed in anger as she whirled to face Rowen. Then she realized that he didn’t mean anything by the title. He was only trying to be polite.

  “I told you before, I’m just called Leah. I’m a Carlton, not a S’Carlton, I’m a …” The word “half-breed” stuck in her throat. Her mind replaced it in quick succession with the other names she’d been called—bastard, Sylvie, mongrel, tree-eater, illegitimate; and as the Sylvan labeled her with more politeness but equal rejection—a shiffem—their term for a female child of half-Sylvan blood.

  She forced back the words and said calmly, “I’m a commoner—not a lady.”

  Michael Rowen looked embarrassed.

  “That’s all right,” Leah continued with a note of forgiveness in her voice that she did not really feel. “It’s a natural mistake. Now, what can I do to help you?”

  “Put your spellstone on top of mine,” he said. His powerstone rested on Barbara’s forehead. “Then put your hands over mine and link with me.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” She’d always been taught not to let her stone come into contact with any other powerstone.

  “Not with proper control.”

  She hesitated, then knelt by his side, removed her necklace, and placed her stone on top of his. She tensed as the surfaces of the two crystals touched. She felt no adverse reaction, however, only a slight tingling on the edges of her awareness.

  Rowen cupped his hands over the stones, which began to glow with a warm white light.

  Again Leah hesitated, still wondering whether Rowen knew what he was doing. There was something about the friendliness in his dove gray eyes that made her trust him. She placed her hands over his.

  Concentrating on her stone, she found herself linked to Rowen as she had been before. He whispered a healing spell, and she recited it with him.

  The ritual words helped her focus on the crystal and channel her power through it. Her psychic awareness increased and altered. The chant became a steady, rhythmic beat. She was hardly aware of it or of her surroundings anymore.

  She could feel Barbara’s presence now, a faint throb of life like a tiny pool of water at the bottom of a deep well. She seemed to be following Rowen down that well. Her hands pressed tightly against his. At the bottom the well became a swirling tunnel of fog and then a dense black vortex, similar to that which had surrounded Richard. It grew harder to move. She felt strangely weak.

  They were very close to Barbara now. They pushed against the darkness inside her mind, forcing it away, trying to free her from it. They touched her and held her. With all their will they pulled her upward, feeding energy back into her, forcing her out of the well of darkness.

  Without warning Leah’s strength failed. Her link to Rowen dissolved. She spun away, back down into the dark well. For an awful moment she was alone, without the slightest bit of energy left to fight. The darkness seemed suddenly vast, peaceful, and irresistible.

  Then the contact between her mind and Barbara’s snapped. Leah opened her eyes to find that Rowen had grabbed the stones from Barbara’s forehead and now held them clenched together in white-knuckled hands several centimeters above Barbara’s face.

  Leah pulled her hands back from his and rubbed them together. They were like ice.

  She felt lightheaded.

  Rowen slipped her talisman around her neck, took her hands in his, and studied her with concern. “I’m sorry—I didn’t realize that you were still so weak from our bout with the Shaltus-stone. Sorcery takes far more energy than we sometimes realize. If we expend too much, it can be dangerous. When I felt you lose control I had to break contact.” “Barbara?” said Leah anxiously. When she looked down at her half-sister she saw that the girl’s face looked pinker and healthier. She was now breathing more easily.

  “It looks as though we did some good after all,” said Rowen.

  Barbara stirred. Her eyes blinked, opened, and slowly focused on his face.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Rowen. He took Barbara’s hand in his. It seemed twice as large as hers. “I … just very tired … what …”

  “Relax, you just need some sleep now.” He glanced at Leah. “So do we.” Then he turned back to Barbara and gently smoothed her hair. As he began to tell her what had happened, her eyes closed.

  “She’s all right now,” said Rusty. “She’s fallen asleep.”

  Michael Rowen patted Barbara’s head once more. Then he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Turning back to Leah he said, “You know, I believe the spellstone was planted here specifically to attack those of you with S’Carlton blood. From what your brother has told me about Shaltus it seems that the wraith’s main goal is to destroy your family in retaliation for what your father did to him. The stone is here just to strike those of S’Carlton blood—that’s why you and Barbara were the ones mainly affected by the backlash from the attack on Richard.”

  “Bishop Mer
ion and the others seemed unharmed,” added Leah.

  Suddenly she realized that there were others of S’Carlton blood within the castle—her nephews, Richard’s two little boys. What if they had been hurt by the backlash …

  Wordlessly she was on her feet, running for the door —but a terrible weakness washed over her before she’d taken a half-dozen steps. She fell.

  Somehow Rusty had gotten there in front of her, as though he’d known in advance of her sudden dash across the room. He caught her as she collapsed.

  She blacked out for a few seconds. When she came to she found both Rusty and Lord Rowen bending over her. Dizzily she tried to bring their faces into focus.

  “Now where did you think you were going?” asked Rusty, running his fingers repeatedly through his graying, reddish hair in agitation.

  “The children … Richard’s … his boys could have been hurt in the attack.”

  Michael Rowen’s face spun before her eyes. “It’s all right. They are out of the castle. I sent them away when I arrived.”

  “Away?” She shut her eyes against the spinning room.

  “They’re up in the kingdom of Richmond visiting your other sister and her husband.” Leah’s eldest half-sister, Laurie, had married the Lord of Richmond, one of the states that along with Carlton made up the loose alliance known as the Eastern Kingdoms. “They’ll be safe there,” continued Rowen. “When we got here Rusty felt that something was about to happen and suggested that we get them out of the castle. I guess we should have sent Barbara too …” He squeezed Leah’s hand, and she felt a short burst of energy that steadied the world around her. Realizing that Rowen was draining his own reserves of energy to help her, she pulled her hand away. “Do you think you can walk now, miss?” asked Rusty.

  Leah nodded, and they helped her stand. She felt totally exhausted.

  “You’ve got to get some food and then some rest,” said Lord Rowen. “And so do I. Rusty, will you please see if you can get something for us to eat.”