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eleven

Nightmares had begun to poison Snudge's sleep even before the prince's retinue left Castle Vanguard, and they had persisted during the journey back to Cala Palace and in the weeks since then. The dream was always more or less the same.

First he found himself reliving his encounter with the Mosslander spy, saw that ravaged face materialize out of invisibility and assume an expression of false friendship, stubby teeth exposed in a parody of a smile. Then the hawk-orange eyes turned to orbs of onyx blazing with malignant talent. The boy once again felt a profound cold spreading through his body and steely thumbs throttling the life out of him. At the brink of death, he finally took fumbling hold of his dagger and slammed it deep into the enemy's heart.

And heard the sorcerer's windspoken cry of desperation: Beynor!

Snudge never saw the spy die, for that was the signal for the dream to change, for another person to appear, one he had never seen when wide awake.

The man was gauntly attractive and quite tall, perhaps no older than Snudge himself, although there was nothing youthful about his masterful bearing and narrow, pinched countenance. He wore sumptuous clothing edged with fur. His head was bare, and his hair was as pale and glistening as thistledown. At first, the young man in the dream appeared to be standing inside various richly furnished rooms, often backed by a window showing a night sky.

In later dreams, Snudge saw him poised in the bow of a great ship, with his hair blown nearly horizontal in a strong wind, which he seemed not to notice. Sails swelled and crackled above him and spray crashed rail-high as the stem ofthe vessel split the water at speed. Beyond lay an expanse of dark ocean, incongruously unruffled, a few drifting icebergs, and a sky strewn with brilliant stars.

Whether in strange mansions or on shipboard, the young man always held the same conversation with Snudge. His bloodless lips spoke without audible sound.

Throw it into the sea, Deveron Austrey!

"What?"

Get rid of it as soon as you can. Throw it away!

"What? Throw away what?"

That which is mine. Go down to the docks in Cala Harbor and throw it into the water so that it may return to me. Banish all memory of it, or risk the revenge of the Lights, pain and desolation more terrible than any that a human being can imagine.

"Who are you? What are you talking about?"

You know what I'm talking about. You stole it from my servant Iscannon after you killed him. You keep it well hidden. You search through books taken from the library of the Royal Alchymist, hoping to unlock its secret. You never will. All you'll discover is a horror worse than death.

"Are you the one called Beynor? The Conjure-Prince of Moss?"

I am. And the thing you stole is mine to command—not yours.

"That's not what the arcane books say. Any talented person—"

So you admit you have the sigil! Stupid cullion—how dare you aspire to know the Beaconfolk? Haven't your clumsy researches taught you what you're playing with? The Lights are older than mankind, older than the Salka, older even than the dry land's rising from the sea. The Coldlight Army could destroy us all on a mere whim.

"But they haven't destroyed you, have they? And they didn't protect your spy from my dagger. Perhaps you're lying to me, Prince Beynor . . . I wonder if I should ask your sister Ullanoth about the Beaconfolk. And about the sigil.

Lowborn fool! Whore's kitling! Stinking heap of dogpuke! Do you think you can bandy words with me? Throw the moonstone into the sea! Do it tonight!

"No. And you can't force me to do it, or you would have done so already. Go to hell."

You're the one who will experience hell, Deveron Austrey. Now feel the leastpunishment the Lights can inflict on ignorant meddlers: BI THO SILSHUA!

Prince Beynor vanished, leaving only a dream-sky with countless stars and that oddly calm northern sea. Snudge felt a gruesome chill again, like the one the sorcerer-spy had inflicted on him, starting at his extremities and flooding slowly toward his body's core, sucking warmth and life from his flesh and entrails and brain. His suffering was appalling—but even worse was the sense of overwhelm­ing fear and foreboding that took hold of him. Somehow, he realized that he had not even begun to experience the fullness of agony. But he would, and very soon, because the torturers were coming for him out of that glittering black sky.

Lights.

Slow-moving blobs of silvery-green, scarlet, and gold, accompanied by a faint hissing crackle, rose up from the horizon. The glowing patches expanded, brightened, became sweeping colored beams and enormous rippling bands and pale bursts of unearthly radiance that finally coalesced into iridescent shapes resembling monstrous living creatures. The Great Lights filled the sky with their brightness and engulfed him, bringing the most atrocious pain he had ever expe­rienced. Whispery laughter mocked him and reveled in his agony as he writhed and tried to scream, and shrank away to a frost-coated nubbin of misery, trapped amidst cracked and shattered bones.

 

He woke up as always, unable to move, rigid on his palliasse in the chamber where he and the elevem other privileged armigers of the prince's cohort slept. He had flung aside the bedcoverings and lay naked to the cold predawn wind blow­ing in from Cala Bay, silently cursing the day he had taken the moonstone sigil from the dead sorcerer.

It hung around his neck on a cord. He never took it off and politely refused to let the other boys examine it closely, saying it was a sacred talisman given him by his late grandfather. The bully Mero Elwick had tried to rip it away one day in the washroom, but Snudge had kneed him in the crotch and left him gagging and cursing, and no one had bothered him about it since.

The square of semi-precious gemstone was carved with the circumpolar con­stellations and odd asymmetrical shapes Snudge could not put a name to. It never glowed or manifested any magic. In the time he had spent in Cala Palace since returning from Castle Vanguard, with Vra-Kilian fortuitously absent on the king's pilgrimage and none of his assistant wizards clever enough to catch him in the act, the boy had rifled the Royal Alchymist's collection of arcane volumes at every opportunity, seeking information about sigils, about the insubstantial beings who empowered them, and about the sorcerers who dared to use such perilous magical instruments. Before retiring each evening, he would report to Prince Conrig the things he had learned—little enough that was useful, but a good deal that scared the wits out of him and made the prince frown with concern.

"I know most of your time is now taken up with-learning the knightly arts," Conrig had said, "but keep searching the Alchymical Library whenever you can. I must know more about the Beaconfolk and the royal conjurors of Moss and the sorcerers of the Glaumerie Guild before we invade Didion."

So Snudge obeyed, and each night dreamed the dream, and woke paralyzed in the freezing twilight before sunup.

After a few minutes he would be able to move again. He'd rewind himself tightly in blankets and feather-tick until he stopped shivering. Then—he never told any of this to Prince Conrig—he prowled the wind in search of any hint that Beynor's dream-visitation and awful words were anything but the product of his own imagination. The search for awareness-threads was invariably fruitless. No one ever seemed to be scrying the part of the palace where he lay—not that they would have been able to oversee him! And no one tried to bespeak him from afar.

As Snudge's body warmed, his talented concentration invariably flagged. No matter how hard he tried to stay art, sleep always claimed him again. Dream-less, he would lie without moving until the rising-bell tolled.

 

On the morning of the day that the dream changed, the armigers broke their fast with big bowls of oat-and-walnut porridge sweetened with willowherb honey. There were cannikins of small ale to drink, and tasty blobs of yellow cheese-curd and new-crop apples for those who still felt hungry. Snudge usually did.

After the meal, which was all they would get to eat until dinner, the boys trooped off to the palace tiltyard to practice warfare with swords, lance, or morningstar--the latter being a spiked iron ball attached to a wooden handle by a chain, particu­larly deadly when wielded by a rider against multiple opponents on foot. All of the squires except Snudge believed that they would soon be marching northward to Beorbrook Hold, where they and the Heart Companions they served would join the earl marshal's forces in guarding Great Pass against Didionite incursions.

A few knights were honing their skills in the yard that day. Two Heart Com­panions, Count Feribor and Count Tayman, fully armored, were tilting in the lists with softwood lances, attended by their squires, Mero and Saundar. But most of the student fighters were armigers—not only of Prince Conrig's cohort but also those who served knights of the royal household. The boys in their short, colored surcoats made a fine display as they charged the quintains on horseback or dueled each other with blunted swords, while trainers looked on and criti­cized. Only Snudge, the youngest and rawest student, and Vra-Stergos's armiger Gavlok Whitfell—slow-moving, gangling, and cursed with too much intelligence and imagination to enjoy simulated mortal combat—earned serious reprimands from the Palace Master-at-Arms, Sir Hale Brackenfield, who circulated about the yard keeping a close eye on the action.

Easygoing Gavlok saw his own lack of fighting expertise as a great joke. His principal duties were to fetch and carry for the Doctor Arcanorum and serve him when he traveled. Guarding his master against physical attack, while also part of an armiger's responsibility, was a minor charge for Gavlock. In spite of having a rather timid, fussy personality, Vra-Stergos was quite capable of fend­ing off common villains with the protective magic of the Mystic Order of Zeth.

Snudge took his own shortcomings more seriously. Not long after returning to Cala Palace, Prince Conrig had commanded Sir Hale to cram as much martial training as possible into his young protégé during the few weeks available to them, even if it left Snudge temporarily lame.

"You'll recover on the march to the north country," Conrig had told the boy with a heartless laugh. "Do us both proud! Remember you're a prince's man now, with a new blazon and honor all your own."

In a stretch of the Cathran custom of battlefield dubbing of commoners who performed deeds of great prowess, the footman Deveron Austry had been declared worthy of knighthood for signal service rendered to the Prince Heritor. (Details were not forthcoming.) The ceremony was brief, attended only by Vra-Stergos, the Heart Companions, and their squires. Snudge swore fealty to Con-rig as his liege lord, and the prince gifted him with a sword, a handsome suit of light armor, a silver drinking cup, and enough money to kit him out decently for his new duties. The knight's belt and the associated grant of lands in fee would not be bestowed until Snudge reached the age of twenty and was legally adult, but he was now an armiger, entitled to be invested with personal armorial bear­ings. The choice was Snudge's own.

After much thought, he chose a silver owl gardant on a sable field for his coat-of-arms. As a result, he'd had to put up with jeering hoots from the other boys, endless jokes about mouse-catching, and a plump rat, cooked to a turn, served up with a flourish at breakfast one morn by a solemn-faced kitchen lad, while the other armigers fell about laughing.

Snudge had done his utmost to absorb the crash course of knightly training. His performance at quintain was respectable enough, because he could influence horses with his talent. He'd gallop at full tilt toward the pivoting dummy on its post and usually managed to hit it squarely with lance or morningstar. Even if he was off center, his control of his mount was so adroit that the treacherous back-swing of the dummy never knocked him out of the saddle.

But swordplay was another kettle of fish. Sir Hale let him learn the basic longsword moves practicing with amiable Gavlok; but after two weeks of slow-motion thrust and parry, Snudge had been passed on to stocky, blackhaired Belamil Langsands, the best swordsman among the armigers, to learn use of the curved varg sword that had been bestowed upon him at his dubbing. The lighter blade was more deadly against skilled warriors when fighting afoot.

Belamil's varg could whirl like a silver windmill and change direction faster than a spooked trout. Even worse, he sang lustily as he fought—for Snudge's benefit the ditty of choice was "The Wise Old Owl"—and rewarded the boy's mistakes by whacking him stoutly with the flat of his varg while caroling the refrain: "To-whit to-whooo!" Even wearing chain mail and a padded jerkin, Snudge ended up bruised from neck to knee after a week of this tutelage. His ego was even more seriously damaged by the universal applause that accompanied Belamil's punishments.

"I'll never be any good with swords," Snudge moaned to Gavlok, as the young fighters paused to rest and quench their thirst with deep drafts of cider.

"It takes time," the lanky squire said, smiling. "At least you've got a certain natural flair. I don't! I'll never be anything better than a bumbling hacker. I plan to ask Lord Stergos for a protective charm before we start out for the north."

"Who says I've got a natural flair?" Snudge asked in disbelief.

"Belamil. He's actually quite pleased at the way you're coming along with the varg."

"You're joking! He laughs at me. He's never given me the least word of encouragement or praise:'

"That's the way it works, young Deveron. Now don't get all puffed up, or tell Belamil that I spoke out of turn."

"I won't," said Snudge humbly. "But thank you for telling me. I've been

feeling pretty rotten about letting Prince Conrig down. I know the rest of the armigers think I'm just a jumped-up servant—"

"Some do. Most of us don't know what to make of you." Gavlok grinned. "You're a strange one. You keep to yourself too much. You creep away, going God knows where after dinner instead of joining the rest of us for games and other fun."

Snudge hesitated. "I have certain tasks to do for the prince:'

"Snooping and sneaking?" The other boy's eyes sparkled, taking some of the sting out of his words. But he was in earnest.

"I can't talk about it, Gavlok I'm sorry." Snudge looked away. Some sort of commotion was going on at the far end of the tilting yard, near the passageway leading into the main block of the palace.

"Did you really save Prince Conrig's life?" The question was offhand. "They say an assassin got into Castle Vanguard and you found him out. But I know you never strayed from the repository tower until the day after the great secret meet­ing, any more than Belamil and Saundar and Mero and I did. We were always together:'

"No we weren't. The lot of you slept too much." Snudge's attention was on the increasing activity across the yard. Even Feribor and Tayman had abandoned their jousting to join the crowd.

"You left the tower when the rest of us were asleep? But there were guards ..:" "And secret passages," said Snudge absently. "What d'you suppose is going on over there? Maybe we'd better go and see:'

"So you skulked about Castle Vanguard stealthily," Gavlok prompted, "and discovered the assassin, and alerted the guard."

"No:' Snudge turned and fixed the older boy with a calm look. "I stabbed the bastard in the heart:'

"God's Teeth!" Gavlok blurted.

"And that's all I'm going to say about it. Tell the other armigers if you like. I don't suppose it matters now. But warn them that I don't want to discuss the matter. It was the most awful moment of my life . . . And now please excuse me. I've got to find out what the excitement is about."

 

Most of the squires and their trainers were gathered around a small figure wear­ing rich court dress, who was jumping up and down in manic glee and exclaim­ing, "Tonight! Tonight! Papa and Mummy are coming back tonight!"

He was Prince Tancoron the Simple, second-born son of King Olmigon, seven-and-twenty years of age, but having the stature and mentality of a ten-year-old. He had bright blue eyes that were too wide set and oddly slanted, a button nose, and beardless cheeks. His sunny, unspoiled nature had made him a favorite of almost everyone in Cala Palace.

"Tonight! They're coming tonight! I heard Con say so. An outrider brought the news. Maybe we'll have a party!" Beaming, he looked up at the Master-at-Arms. "Will we have a party, Sir Hale?"

"I think not, Your Grace," Brackenfield said in a patient voice. "Your royal father the king is not well. When he comes home, he'll have to rest. But we can gather in the forecourt to welcome him, and perhaps there will be a party later."

The simpleton's face fell. "But I thought Papa went away to get better. He told me he'd ask the emperor's ghost to help him."

Count Feribor's laugh was full of cruel condescension. "Ghosts are not very good doctors, Prince Tanny. Actually, they're rather frightful things! The king didn't really expect Emperor Bazekoy's spirit to make him well. He wanted the emperor to give him uncanny advice. Advice about the kingdom. Every king of Cathra may ask the emperor's spirit one important Question."

Tancoron nodded gravely. "What if the Question is, `How can I get well?"

Mero, Count Feribor's squire, gave a snort of contempt. Others in the crowd murmured uneasily, afraid of what might be coming. Count Tayman said, "Feri, I don't think you should—"

"Oh, your father the king would never ask a silly thing like that, Prince Tanny." Feribor was still in full armor, except for the tilting helm, which was held by Mero. His saturnine face was streaked with sweat and his dark eyes held a gleam of expectant mirth. But his next words were spoken with great gentleness. "You see, only a dying king may ask Emperor Bazekoy a Question."

There were gasps from the armigers. The prince uttered a forlorn little wail. "Papa is dying?"

"Didn't they tell you?" Feribor Blackhorse was all solicitude. "Well, maybe they were afraid it would make you cry. And princes should never be crybabies."

"Damn you, Feri!" muttered Count Tayman. But no one else dared say a word against the queen's nephew, who only played his little games when Conrig or other members of the royal family were not present.

"I—I don't want to be a crybaby." Tancoron's face was dark with woe. Tears brimmed in his blue eyes. "But I don't want my papa to die. Papa! Papa!" With desperate strength, the small man pushed his way through the crowd of appalled fighters and dashed away into the passage leading to the palace.

"Poor lackwit," said Feribor cheerfully. "Well, he brought good news, at any rate, didn't he, lads? With the king back and giving his royal permission, we'll be off to fight the starving Diddlies in no time at all! . . . Come on, Tayman. Let's have one more joust before we call it a day."

 

After the evening meal, at about the eighth hour, Snudge hastened to the tower where the Royal Alchymist had his quarters. If the king's cavalcade was due before midnight, as Prince Conrig had announced during dinner, then this would be the last safe opportunity get at Vra-Kilian's books before his return.

Two young novice wizards had guard duty outside the door of the Alchymi­cal Library, which connected to Kilian's private chambers. They sat at flanking desks equipped with oil lamps, copying out manuscripts. The library door was slightly ajar, as was usual during the daylight and evening hours, when Kilian's many assistants might need to consult the volumes of arcana or collections of magical paraphernalia in their master's outer offices. Above the doorframe hung a brass bell of peculiar form, with a clapper attached to a cord. If it was rung, every alchymist and windvoice in the palace would come running.

Snudge took off his house shoes and left them in a dark alcove, then cast his windsight about to make sure no one else was working in the library or approaching. The coast was clear, and the guardian novices hadn't noticed him. It was time to hide. Taking a deep breath, he concentrated his talent upon the two heads bent over leaves of parchment, commanding them not to look up. Quill pens continued to scratch industriously. The boy left the alcove and walked boldly up to the novices in his stocking feet, went through the door, and closed it without a sound. Neither of the men paid any attention to him.

Strictly speaking, Snudge's method of "hiding" had nothing to do with gen­uine invisibility. It was rather a way of distracting the minds of others, so that people had no desire to look at him and never noticed his presence. The trick didn't always work, especially with the adept, who were sensitive to mental med­dling. Even ordinary folk might penetrate his spell if he made noise or tried the trick when there were more than two or three persons about in broad daylight.

Tonight he was home free again! So—one last chance to search out the sigil's secret, and better be quick about it. He'd long since examined the books on the open shelves and knew they contained nothing very useful. The volumes that remained to be investigated were inside the Royal Alchymist's private rooms, located at the far end of the library. He'd been in there before, taking advantage of Vra-Kilian's absence.

It was laughably easy to pick the lock, slip inside, and refasten the door behind him. His talent ignited the tapers of a silver candelabrum standing on a table, which he took up to illuminate his way.

The achymist's sitting room gave onto his bedchamber and the inner sanc­tum, the latter being secured with two complex locks, which Snudge spent some time opening. That small room, where the most important books and magical apparatus were kept, was a windowless place having a single worktable and a tier of shelves holding curious contraptions, some protected by glass covers. Against the wall on the right stood four magnificently carved oaken cabinets equipped with elaborate locks—and indwelling magical spells to prevent windsnoopers from discerning their contents. Snudge had already opened and scrutinized the contents of two of them. Several of the ancient volumes inside had provided him with general information on the Beaconfolk and the Glaumerie Guild of Moss, facts that he had dutifully shared with Prince Conrig; but there had been no details about the sigils' function, only emphatic warnings against using them.

It took Snudge nearly half an hour to open the third enchanted cabinet, using his most delicate picks. The thing turned out to be packed with sacks of gold coins, bejeweled rings, and other portable riches that the austere Brothers of Zeth weren't supposed to concern themselves with. Snudge grunted in dis­gust, wondering whether the prince would be interested to know about his uncle's inappropriate cache of valuables. He never thought of taking any of it for himself.

The fourth cabinet was smaller than the others and bound about sturdily with heavy iron bands. It was not secured by a mortise lockset, as the other three had been, but had a steel escutcheon with a type of locking device that Snudge had never seen before. It had no keyhole and thus was immune to his picks. Four tiny revolving ring-cylinders were set into the plate beside the handle, and each was etched with a succession of odd characters, like letters of an alien alphabet. The boy quickly decided that opening the lock would require aligning the appro­priate characters, and there seemed to be a dozen or more on each cylinder.

Snudge's knowledge of mathematics was only rudimentary, but he realized that the potential number of character-combinations was very large.

Hopeless! Unless .. .

Was Vra-Kilian as lazy as ordinary mortals? Would he bother spinning the four rings each time he locked the cabinet, or was he so confident of his magisterial authority over his underlings that he used a shortcut?

Snudge turned the lowest cylinder clockwise a single notch to a new charac­ter. Nothing. He turned it counter-clockwise

Click

Yes!

Easing open the cabinet's weighty door, he choked back a blasphemous exclamation. Most of the shelves were empty. But the middle one held two wicker baskets full of sigils.

They were of various shapes and sizes, thick and thin, densely carved or nearly plain. Many were perforated and strung on rotting cords, or on golden chains like the one worn by the dead sorcerer Iscannon. All were carved from blue-white, translucent mineral. None of them possessed the uncanny foxfire glow of magical life, but Snudge was still afraid to touch them.

Three volumes bound in stained, crumbling, pearl-colored leather lay beside the baskets. Each had a round wafer of moonstone in a golden setting fastened firmly to its cover. There was no lettering stamped on the books to hint at the subject matter within. He picked one up and felt the fragile pages shift, as if they were separating from the binding.

How old was this collection? Had Vra-Kilian inherited these things from some long-dead predecessor, and had he kept them hidden, too prudent (or fear­ful) to invoke the magic of the Beaconfolk himself?

But if that was so, why had he left the strange lock ready to open? Had he anticipated that he might sometime need the cabinet's contents in a hurry?

Snudge removed the three books and sat on the floor to study them by candlelight. The two larger ones were in an unknown language, and he set them aside. The third volume, smaller and more slender than the others, seemed to be written in some variant of the Cathran tongue; but the inscribed letters were faded and oddly shaped, and the spelling was strange. Many of the words were incomprehensible, and he realized that it would take some effort to decipher the book's contents.

He turned the brittle pages cautiously. There were five short chapters with titles he could read fairly easily: A [Brief?] Thaumaturgia of the Cold Light Host; A Catalogus of Sigils; Conjuration and Abolition of the Sigil; Commanding the Sigil; and, last and most ominously, Vital Precautions for the Thaumaturgist.

"Futter me!" he whispered, stricken with awe and delight. "Bull's-eye at last!"

Now what?

He didn't dare take any of the stones. Having one of them in his possession was hard enough to explain to his overcurious peers. But the smallest book could be concealed easily enough, and perhaps Vra-Kilian wouldn't notice that it was missing. Snudge reckoned it must hold the secret to activating his own sigil, if he could only puzzle it out.

Time had flown, and he had to cover his traces and get out quickly. It had to be nearly ten, the hour when the guardian novices secured the main library for the night. He couldn't risk being locked in. Snudge knew well enough that none of the picks he carried were large enough to open the massive lock on the outer door. And, of course, the Royal Alchymist himself would be returning to his rooms shortly after the king's train arrived .. .

Hastily, the boy scooped up the two foreign-language books and replaced them on the shelf. He shut the cabinet and reset the lock combination as he had found it.

Now, how to carry the other book safely? If he hid it in his clothes or crammed it into his wallet, the old thing might fall to pieces.

Snudge sighed. The lining of his brand-new armiger's doublet would have to be sacrificed. He used his knife to slice out a strip of silk, wrapped the book, and thrust it under his shirt, where it nestled against the sigil on its long cord. What next? A few crumbs of pale bookbinding had fallen to the floor. He moistened a finger, picked them up, and tapped them down his neck.

The burnt-down candles would have to be replaced. Snudge had found unused ones in the sitting room's candelabrum when he first broke in. He wasted frantic minutes searching tabourets and presses until he discovered a box of fresh candles. The stubs and fallen blobs of beeswax went into his wallet. He scried the main library to be sure it was unoccupied and went out, locking the door to the private rooms behind him.

Another quick windscan showed him the two novices nodding over their work. He heard the castle chimes begin to strike the tenth hour. The young wizards sighed, stretched, and grinned at each other as they began putting their work away inside their desks.

Snudge concentrated his talent and slipped through the outer door. Neither robed figure looked up as he moved down the gloomy corridor, retrieved his shoes, and went away quietly. Behind him, the sound of an enormous iron key grated in its lock. He hurried toward the wing of the palace where the Prince Heritor's apartments were, intending to show his master what he'd discovered; but when he arrived, the lord-in-waiting on duty, whose name was Telifar, turned him away.

"His Grace is preparing for the arrival of the king," the man said, "as well as an extraordinary meeting of the Privy Council. You won't be giving him your usual report tonight, young Deveron. He says to come tomorrow after breakfast if you've anything important to tell him."

"Very well, my lord," said Snudge, disappointed. But as he walked toward the armigers' quarters in the Square Tower of the palace, he decided that the delay was all for the best. If he had time to explore the book's contents, he might have something really useful to tell Prince Conrig.

His hand stole inside his jerkin, then beneath the shirt where the book was hidden. He felt the slippery silk wound around it starting to come loose. Cod­ders! Better stop and wrap it up tightly again lest the book be damaged. He ducked behind a heavy window-drape and began to unfasten his clothes, then stopped abruptly as a faint aching pain spread across his chest.

A greenish light had ignited beneath the white linen of his shirt.

"Oh, God!" he moaned, tearing open the rest of the buttons. The silk had fallen away from the book, and the moonstone disk attached to its cover was pressed against the sigil that hung about his neck. Both pieces of stone were aglow. Carefully, he lifted the book away, holding it through the silk.

The disk's light winked out, but that of the sigil continued to shine. The dull ache persisted as well, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he spied a quick movement. But he was almost completely enveloped in the drape, concealed between it and the window, with dark night beyond the panes of thick glass. When he looked about the constricted space he saw nothing—no fluttering moth, no drifting bit of lint, no disturbed spiderling creeping on the dusty cloth.

Once again he detected that elusive movement just beyond his field of vision. And there was a harsh deep voice, asking a question.

CADAYAN RUDAY?

Snudge gave a great start and almost yelped in terror. Then he realized that the words were being spoken on the wind. But it was no human voice asking the question. The words meant nothing to him.

CADAYAN RUDAY?!

The pain! It was sharper, and the windvoice was louder as well, an invisible giant bellowing out of an echoing cavern. Getting impatient, too. CADAYANRUDAY?!!!

The voice was like rolling thunder in his mind. A sudden piercing chest-thrust from the moonstone, like an icicle's stab, bent him over double. His vision was beginning to dim and he choked back a scream. The sigil swung on its cord away from his flesh and the pain ceased abruptly. He clawed at the cord and pulled the amulet off. It fell to the floor, where it lay with its glow extinguished.

In his mind, there was only silence.

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