pushed himself up.
He looked to his side and saw the top of the sphere poking out of the sand from where he had dropped it. He scooped it up and slowly climbed to his feet, panting rapidly. For a moment he gently swayed back and forth, waiting for the throbbing to quiet and the flashes of light to clear from his eyes.
'But with the sorcerer's eye, would not the effort for enchantment of only one be greatly reduced?' he called out. 'And with a willing subject, even less required.'
All eyes turned to Alodar as he weaved across the beach and finally thrust the eye into Kelric's hand. 'Use it,' he said. 'It will be some time before I will be of full service to the fair lady.'
Kelric looked down at the translucent orb, up to Alodar, and then back to the queen. He ran his eyes over her a second time and then scratched his side. For a long moment, he was silent. 'Oh, it just might work,' he conceded at last. 'Yes, with the help of the eye. I learned the charm in my youth and thought I never would have cause to use it. And for the attention of the fair lady against expiring alone, I may as well try.'
'Then there remains only the matter of the subject,' Vendora said, looking quickly around the circle. 'Who among you will seize the opportunity for greater glory?'
Heads dropped as she scanned the group. As if she were a sorceress herself, the circle of men avoided her eyes. A minute passed and no one moved.
'Men of great bravery and pledged to the fair lady!' Keltic laughed. 'And not one as brave as an old man with insufficient strength to draw a sword.'
'My life for the crown of Procolon I have always sworn,' Grengor responded quietly. 'I do so still. But that life I have pledged to give in honor in battle, not smothered and stolen away by the foulness of sorcery.'
'But it seems the only way,' Alodar said. 'Without the enchantment, we will not bend this first small band to our side.'
'Then let it be you, suitor and savior of the queen,' Duncan sneered. 'You have the righteous air of the pure hero of the saga. If you are indeed true to your ideals, then it is you who should do the deed.'
Vendora turned to Alodar and her lips curved into a small smile. 'It seems your boasts with sorcery far exceeded your craft, Alodar,' she said. 'How soon then will it be before you can swing a blade and carry an equal load with the rest?'
Alodar licked his lips and held himself steady as he returned the gaze of the queen. He heard Aeriel rush to his side but nodded before she could speak. 'It is as Kelric states, my fair lady,' he replied, 'a question of bravery. When you weigh the virtues of your suitors, remember who spoke when all the others remained silent.'
The first recitation had been long. Alodar sagged with weakness as he sat in front of Kelric, who still held the small sphere at eye level. He looked from the motionless old sorcerer, mumbling before him, to the ocean beyond. In the low afternoon sun, he could see the sail of the longboat still fluttering above high tide. He looked to the south, over the unending beach that finally blurred out in the distance. He studied the hills to the north that curved to the surf, cutting off his view.
Then with a sudden shock, Alodar felt his gaze wrenched in the direction of the sphere. Instinct took over; he tried to draw his head away or raise an arm, but his muscles would not respond. With great effort, he squinted his eyes to thin slits, resolved to catch only a glimpse of what Kelric held in his hand and then dart away. But he could only blink once, then stare directly into the globe.
A single eye, now fully open, glowed back at him, its pupil golden yellow and dilated with power. Around the white perfectly spaced black lashes stood tensely erect, and tiny crackles of blue flame darted from one hair to the next. The eye floated free in the confines of the sphere, circled with but a hint of the palest flesh. In fascination, Alodar examined the orb which confronted him, feeling that he must let no part go unstudied or neglected. Even from the distance, he could somehow tell that the lashes curved inward in the same precise arcs; not a single vein marked the perfect whiteness in which the pupil swam.
With a last shudder, he stared straight at the pupil and felt a sudden dizziness as the world about him swept away. The sea, the hills, the men who stood with faces guarded, one by one they dimmed and were gone. Alodar lashed his mind out in blackness. He groped for the fabric of his existence but felt it dissolve. The other suitors, the craftmasters, Vendora, Aeriel?visions of them warped before him and slid away into the blackness. And Alodar, Alodar the suitor, the neophyte magician, the alchemist's apprentice, the journeyman thaumaturge, the one who quested for the fair lady?like the layers of an onion, his self-images were peeled off and crumbled away. Shell after shell faded into oblivion. As the innermost core was bared and dissolved with the rest, Alodar screamed in anguish and then was quiet.
Now there was only the eye and the eye was everything. The blackness was complete; he could not see. The silence was complete; he could not hear. He was composed of nothingness; he could not feel. But the eye was there. The eye would provide; the eye would guide him. What was proper for him to see, he would be shown. What was proper to hear, he would hear. What was proper for him to feel, he would feel.
Gradually and gently, he began to perceive. At first it was only a whisper and, because there was nothing else, he dwelt upon it; the murmur grew into a hiss of surf on sand. As it did, the darkness lifted; the sun shone behind him, lighting a gentle sea, broken only by a single mast standing above the tide. The sea ran upon a beach, a beach that stretched off in the distance to the south and butted against hard granite hills to the north.
He felt the wind course about him, heard the call of gulls above the beach. The scene before him shimmered for an instant. Then, where there had been no one, a tired old man was sitting in the sand. Without asking, Alodar knew the man was Kelric the sorcerer. He heard a cough behind. Without turning, he knew of the marines and the men of the court of Procolon.
He watched the sorcerer without feeling. And as he waited, he felt himself take form, felt the layers build upon the seed that sprang into being as he watched. He was Alodar, Alodar the journeyman thaumaturge, the alchemist's apprentice, and the neophyte magician. Feeling coursed through his limbs. He was Alodar the fighter and he felt a restlessness welling up in him, to take form and guide him to action. He felt a desire to strike, to bring forth blood, to hack until be could hack no more. And it felt right. He was Alodar and this was his purpose for being.
He rose to his feet, eyes still on the sorcerer who somehow held his attention. Behind the huddled form he saw a woman, looking away, walking slowly along the beach. She was beautiful, cheeks aglow, crimson hair flowing behind as the waves rolled up to touch her bare feet.
In a flash he was Alodar the suitor as well as the fighter. As he looked at the woman, something began to matter greatly. It bubbled up beside the desire to fight and it grew angular and sharp and sawed at his mind for attention. But the lust for blood flamed higher, and the edges of the other desire shrank beside it. The sharpness rounded and it subsided. She was only Aeriel, a lady of the court. He was Alodar the journeyman thaumaturge, the alchemist's apprentice, the neophyte magician?but most of all, Alodar the warrior.
The feeling exploded within him and he drew his sword with a mighty flourish and a piercing scream. Without waiting for the others, he turned and raced out of the camp, across the sand, and to the fight, to the blood that beckoned him from the hills to the north.
Like a machine of the thaumaturges, Alodar stomped forward with an even cadence up and over the low dunes, across the gullies that emptied to the sea, striding evenly, breathing evenly, not pausing to check his direction or how far he had gone.
He was aware of the others scurrying behind, trying to keep pace. Once, after an hour, two of the marines raced by carrying the sorcerer between them on a makeshift stretcher. The old man raised himself shakily on one arm as they came alongside and looked Alodar deeply in the eyes. Alodar paid him no heed. After a moment, Kelric signaled that all was well. His bearers dropped back to join the throng behind.
The sun sank towards the west, casting the men's shadows before them as they finally climbed through a cut in the hills. At the narrow pass, Alodar felt a sudden compulsion to pause. He waited for the rest to draw up beside him and look down to a cove beyond.
They saw a narrow finger of the sea crook inland in the midst of a scattering of small campfires. Around each, two or three men sprawled in relaxation, talking, picking fleas from each other, and gnawing on the remains of the evening meal. Nearest the inlet, one roared with laughter, holding high a silver cup and wiping the back of his hand on a woolly vest. On the peninsula of land between the bay and the sea, women and children clustered about low-slung tents and hobbled ponies.
'It is as the captive painted it,' Grengor said. 'If we hurry we can take them as they eat.'
'Then let us group at the outcropping over there,' another man replied. 'With master Alodar rushing out, and a
