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shot through his chest. The lich was caught off guard by the icy hot sensation. He pitched over and
writhed on the rocky chamber floor until his frantic movements knocked the crown free.
The painful spasms ended, and the lich slowly stood. "What manner of power was that, priests?" the lich
gasped.
The spirit wore the face of the old woman. 'The power of eternal life. The heart of he who wears the
crown will beat
forever."
Szass Tarn's human form melted away, revealing his skeletal frame and pinpoint eyes. "My heart does
not beat," he said flatly.
"So instead, you felt pain," the woman answered. "The Lady of the Mists is indeed more treacherous
than you. Leira lured you here. The priest who tempted your favored apprentice with the relic was merely
a pawn."
The lich kicked the crown across the floor and glared at the spectre.
"Again the Patroness of Illusionists and Liars struck when your apprentice betrayed you and sought the
crown herself. Then my goddess triumphed once more when you lost that which you held dear, a
beautiful sorceress who would have spent eternity at your side." The ghostly image pointed at the
struggling Frodyne. "You've lost your army, your woman, your ability to trust others. And the prize at the
end of your quest was something you can never possess. Who is the more treacherous, Szass Tarn?"
The lich threw back his head and laughed, a deep, throaty sound that reverberated off the walls of the
cavern. The lich roared loud and long as he padded from the chamber and climbed the stairs.
THIEVES' REWARD
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Mary H. Herbert
The water of Lake Ashane lay far below Teza's feet, as hard and dark as a sheet of black glass. No
wave rippled its smoothness; nothing could be seen beneath its glistening surface to indicate the depth.
Not that depth really mattered to Teza. She could not swim, and no one had ever measured the
bottomless depths of the Lake of Tears.
The young woman forced her terror back and stared up the length of her outstretched arms to the frayed
bit of rope that prevented her from plunging into the lake so far below.
"Please," she whispered in agony. Her arms felt like melting lead, and her body seemed to grow heavier
by the second. There was nothing beneath her feet to catch her weight nothing but air and that terrible
fall to the water. Teza stilled a sob. She hated water.
The young woman looked higher into the eyes of the creature who dangled her so carelessly over the
edge of the high cliff. He was blacker than night's shadow, hungrier than a shark, and more beautiful than
the most exquisite horse Teza had ever seen. Some people said the rare predatory water horses, the
aughiskies, did not exist, but Teza would have been delighted to trade places with
any of those doubters just to prove them wrong.
A tense stillness closed around her. There was only her hoarse breathing, which rasped like a threnody
behind the beating of her terrified heart. She sensed a scream well inside her from the depths of her mind,
and it spread outward to her heart, lungs, throat, and mouth until she nearly burst with the primal terror
within her.
The aughisky's eyes glowed green with their own cruel fire. Deliberately he shook the rope attached to
his bridle. Teza slipped downward. Her face turned white, and her features screwed into a mask of
panic.
Suddenly he wrenched the rope out of her hands, and Teza began to fall.
The scream so tightly held burst loose in a horrible, rending shriek of protest. "NO!"
Teza bolted awake to the sound of her own voice. Blackness enveloped her, and she tore frantically at
the blanket that covered her head. Panting, wet with sweat, she scrambled out of her rough bed and
crouched like a cornered beast by the embers of her campfire.
Close beside her, head hung low to see her, stood the aughisky, blacker than the night around him. His
large eyes gleamed a ghastly light, and he watched her with an uncanny intelligence she found
disconcerting. He snorted, a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
"Oh, gods of all!" Teza gasped and collapsed to a sitting position by her fire. She heaped wood on the
embers until the flames roared, but the heat and light did little to dispel the cold fear that settled in her
bones from that terrible nightmare. It had seemed so real!
What am I going to do? she thought. Over a year ago, she had fled Immilmar with a price on her head
and a stolen aughisky in her keeping. Since that time, she had hidden in the wild lands far from the city
she loved and the lake that nourished her horse. They had scraped out a meager living, but Teza was sick
of the struggle, and she could see the aughisky was not thriving.
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What he felt about their circumstances, she didn't know. She never knew what he was thinking. Teza
usually had a close rapport with horses, and she loved this
glorious black animal with a passion she had never felt for another beast. But he remained aloof,
unfriendly at times, watchful, and distrustful. She knew he could not leave her voluntarily, nor would he
really try to drown and eat her because of the spell of binding she had placed on him with a hippomane.
Yet he always seemed so cold and distant.
Something cool brushed her cheek. Teza looked up from her fire and saw with dismay snowflakes
swirling around her camp. It was early in the month of Uktar, and already winter approached. Winter the
year before had been a miserable series of frozen hungry nights and empty hungry days.
She turned to study the aughisky. There were real risks taking a water horse that drowned and ate
humans to Immilmar. On the other hand, what was worse? The threat of exposure and imprisonment or [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]