The Wizard_s Fate

“Gone? You mean dead?”

“No, no. She left on a tour of Balifor the same day Lucklyn returned from his long walkabout.”

“Was it affairs of state that separated them again, after they’d been apart so long?”

Early gave him a disbelieving look. “I thought you said you’d met Queen Casberry?” Tol laughed.

Putting aside his own worries, Tol found the kender a diverting companion. Early had an endless supply of droll, bizarre, and amusing stories, including one explaining the origin of the topknot hairstyle so many of his people wore. Tol blushed like a new bride when he heard that one.

They rode northeast all day, through empty orchards and harvested fields. Tol stayed off the main road, wanting to make it more difficult for spies to track their progress.Well after sunset, Tol finally called a halt, and they camped in a windbreak of pines. The woods were silent. All sensible creatures were either hibernating or had shifted to warmer climes. Early settled on the other side of the small campfire, making a tent of his blanket. Only the tip of his nose and frosty puffs of breath betrayed his presence. Frost formed on the horsehair blanket Tol draped over his head.

Hypnotized by the flickering flames, Tol slept sitting up, Number Six lying across his lap. In the oblique, abrupt way of dreams, he found himself sharing the fire with two robed figures, one seated on each side of him.

At first the two seemed identical, cowled in dark gray fabric, their faces invisible. Tol tried to speak but could make no sound. Even so, he was not afraid. There was no telltale flicker of heat, so magic wasn’t at work. This was only a dream.

The figure on his left slowly leaned forward, hands extending from the sleeves of his heavy gray robe. The right hand was white, with short fingers, the left dark and lean. A memory of the apparition on the bowsprit of the galleot Quarrel flashed into Tol’s mind; it too had had mismatched hands. After a slight hesitation, the phantom on the right made the same motion; his hands were both dark.

The fire hissed and popped. Sparks lofted skyward, winking out against a background of brilliant stars. Rising above the sputter of burning wood came other sounds-indistinct, rapid whispers. Gradually, the scratchy sounds resolved into words.

Go back! Go back!

The words came from the specter on his left, the one with mismatched hands.

Tol tried again to speak, and this time he could. “I will not go back! “he stated.

There is grave danger. This came from the apparition on the right, yet its voice seemed identical to the first.

“I will not turn back,” Tol repeated. “Many wrongs must be righted.”

From his left: Go back, or all you love will suffer.

“Who are you?”

The figure with two dark hands pointed through the leaping flames at the other phantom: He is the one you seek.

Tol gripped his sword hilt, and glared at the phantom with mismatched hands. Mandes, of course! The sorcerer must have replaced his lost arm with a limb belonging to someone else.

The shade with mismatched hands gestured sharply. Pay no attention to him. He is dead!

Tol’s heart raced. A name surfaced in his mind, the name of one cherished and lost, one who had dark skin. “Felryn? Felryn, is that you?”

Go back, or all you love will suffer!

The words came from the Mandes figure, and this time there was no doubt they were not a warning, but a threat. Although his limbs felt oddly leaden, Tol shifted the heavy saber off his lap.

Mandes spoke again. Go back, Tol of Juramona. Give up this quest, or each night someone you care about will die!

“No! This matter is between us, Mandes! Leave everyone else out of it!”

He’s afraid, whispered the Felryn shade. You are his doom.

“Protect them, Felryn! Protect Valaran and the rest!”

He can do nothing! He is dead! Mandes said.

With a mighty effort, Tol swung the saber up, laying the blade flat on his right shoulder.

“Nothing short of my own death will keep me from seeing justice done. You will submit to the emperor’s judgment. If you harm anyone else, nothing will prevent me from taking your life-and it won’t be easily done! You’ll die by moments, traitor! I promise you!”

With that, he managed a wild swing of his sword. It swept through the campfire and into the figure with the mismatched hands. There was no sensation of striking cloth or flesh. The blade passed through the specter as through smoke.

Tol lost his balance and pitched headfirst into the fire. He clenched his eyes shut, expecting to feel searing flame.

With a jerk, he came awake. He was sitting upright under his blanket, Number Six cold across his legs. The fire had died to a few glowing embers. By this feeble light he saw his kender companion curled up across from him, frost heavy on his blanket. The horses drowsed nearby, standing so close together their sides touched.

The quiescent horses as much as the undisturbed dirt around the fire told Tol that no one had been present. The millstone was safe in its pouch in the waistband of his smallclothes. Had it been only an ordinary dream, or was Felryn truly warning him?

He stood and stretched his stiffened limbs. With the constellations as his guide, he looked back in the direction of Daltigoth, out of sight below the horizon. Did Valaran sleep peacefully tonight? Were Kiya and Miya well? Would Egrin be safe?

Early shifted in his sleep, snorting as he settled back into deeper slumber. Tol added wood to the fire and listened to his companion’s steady breathing.

Ah, to be a kender and never fret about anything.

As dawn began to brighten the eastern sky, they broke camp and reached the Dalti River just as the sun was clearing the tops of the trees. The simple dirt track they followed, used by cattle herders and itinerant peddlers, ended at the broad, slow-flowing Dalti. There was no bridge, only an anchored ferry. The ferryman’s hut stood on a knoll overlooking the waterway. It was surrounded by empty cattle pens and a ramshackle stable. Smoke seeped from the hut’s chimney. Tol rode up, dismounted, and knocked on the door.

The ferryman was a centaur. Gray-bearded, with a seamed, leathery face, he emerged from the snug house pulling a blanket over his shoulders. His horse’s body was a brown roan color.

“Early,” he grumbled, wiping sleep from his dark eyes.

“That’s me,” replied the kender.

The centaur looked confused. “Early to be travelin’,” he clarified.

Early nodded vigorously, “I am, and this is my partner, Lor-”

“Name’s Loric,” Tol said loudly, not wanting to announce his identity to all and sundry. “My kender friend’s Early.”

“You both are,” the centaur answered, stamping a hoof.

Tol let it drop. They followed the centaur into the ferry station.

The station had been built for a human operator, but the centaur, whose name was Edzar, had long occupied it. The house now resembled a horse barn, devoid of any furniture, its packed dirt floor covered with hay. A fire burned on the hearth, and two iron kettles bubbled there. Edzar offered them oat porridge and sweet cider. Tol gladly accepted the cider. Early had both.

The centaur clamped a gnarled hand around the handle and lifted the cider pot off the fire to fill Tol’s clay cup. Tol was amazed. The twisted iron bale was hot enough to raise blisters on a human hand.

“Where you headed?” asked Edzar.

Fortunately, Early was spooning gray porridge in his mouth and couldn’t answer. “Caergoth,” Tol said.

“Soldier, eh?”

An obvious assumption, what with his war-horse and sword, so he nodded. “Reporting back to my horde in