Clash of Catalysts Read online

  Now as she stretched and got to her feet, she felt revived by a few hours of sleep. But she was becoming aware of a new problem, a growing emptiness in her stomach. When had she last eaten? She didn’t remember. She had left her supplies with her horse, back among the trees overlooking the valley of the wizard’s tower.

  She looked around, wondering if there might be any food stowed in the chamber. Thus far, she had spent all her effort exploring the walls of her prison. She hadn’t really studied the objects in the room. She decided to familiarize herself for the first time with the contents of the chamber.

  She went to the shelves along the walls. There were books and all manner of mysterious items that looked unimportant to her but might have hidden value. The wizard of the tower hadn’t struck her as the sort of man who would collect useless junk. If he took the trouble to gather and store these things, they must have a purpose.

  She picked up a collapsible brass tube, stretched it to its full length, and held it up to one eye. When she peered through the end, the tube revealed things from a long distance as if they were right in front of her.

  Replacing the tube, she moved on to a large sphere on a stand that had an intricately detailed map of Earth Realm stretched over it. Slowly revolving the sphere, Eydis saw places on the map she had never known existed before. There were also familiar spots: the kingdom of Lythnia, the Arxus Mountains, and the many little provinces on the far side of the mountains.

  She took up a small mirror on a silver handle, only to find it was no mirror at all. Instead of seeing her reflection inside, she saw her own hand through the glass, magnified so many times over that it looked like the hand of a giant.

  Hastily setting the glass down, her attention was drawn to a painted wooden bowl. It held many brightly colored balls that she first took for decoration. But her nose revealed they had a fruity smell. Taking one of the exotic fruits in her hand, she sampled the rough peel, only to find it had an unpleasant acidy flavor. But scraping back the peel with her fingernails, she found the juicy fruit inside was edible, if tart.

  The immediate problem of food resolved, she gnawed on the moist fruit while continuing her examination of the room. Apart from the shelves along the walls, there were several cluttered tables. There was also a pedestal holding a cloth-covered shape she had seen the wizard examining before. She pulled back the cloth and found herself looking at a crystal gazing ball.

  This wasn’t her first glimpse of the gazing ball. She had long known this was one of the wizard’s means of watching her, of predicting her moves. But until now, she had never been close enough to get a good look at the thing. It didn’t seem like a magical window to distant places. It was just a simple opaque sphere. But as Eydis gazed into the glossy crystal, it grew less cloudy. The mists began to swirl and part before her eyes, revealing a setting that couldn’t have been more real if she had stood in the midst of it.

  She saw the oracle of Silverwood Grove dressed in trailing golden robes and riding on the back of a black steed. The oracle was at the head of a long column of soldiers whose armor glinted in the midday sun as they marched out of a city. At the oracle’s side rode a man who dressed like a lord or some other person of importance. But if the lord was the commander of the troops, there was no doubt who had mustered them and for what purpose. The oracle prepared for war.

  The scene shifted and became something else. Gone were the oracle and her forces. Now Eydis looked down on a swarm of strange winged warriors in some mountainous place. They were arming themselves as if preparing for battle and climbing onto the backs of huge dragons. Alongside these dragons was Kalandhia, the smaller dragon looking like the youngling it was, in the shadows of full-grown beasts. On the back of Kalandhia was Geveral, looking grim but determined as he gripped a sword in one hand and a wooden staff in another. Next to the dryad was a moving blur, difficult to make out at first. It was a shifting form, a piece of wing, a cheek, and an eye. It was Keir, half dragonkin boy and half shadow monster.

  “Where are you all going?” Eydis murmured to her friends, touching the crystal ball.

  The polished glass felt cool as she clasped it in her palms. As if activated by her touch, the mists inside the gazing stone swirled, enveloping Geveral and Keir until they disappeared.

  When the white clouds cleared, as if blown away by a strong wind, Eydis saw a dense and wild jungle of towering trees heavily draped with vines. Three figures labored to cut their way through the thick vegetation. One of them, Orrick, swung a sword, chopping at the vines barring his way. His brows were drawn together in frustration. Sweat sleeked his skin. Behind him was a bearded one-eyed dwarf bearing an axe. And alongside the dwarf was a female vampire, whose glowing eyes flicked from side to side, alert for danger.

  As reassuring as it was to catch these confusing glimpses of her friends, Eydis needed to know more. She must figure out how to control the views she was given by the crystal. But how? She concentrated on a figure she had seen only in visions, a knight in dark armor with red-jeweled eyes in a skull-shaped helm. Rathnakar. She imagined him with the golden scepter in his hands, as it must now be. What was he doing at this very moment? Where was the Raven King?

  Orrick and his companions disappeared, and the crystal globe grew foggy again. Try as Eydis might, she could not summon an image of Rathnakar to come forth. Could it be that he was using his power to somehow shield himself from curious eyes?

  She gave up the effort to find Rathnakar and focused on an easier target. Varian Nakul, the Raven King’s servant. She had met Nakul before, had been his prisoner briefly. Maybe that connection would help her seek him out. She imagined him as she had last seen him, with his master’s amulet glowing around his neck. She envisioned his eyes, mostly crazed with the light of Rathnakar’s power but occasionally flickering, just for an instant, with conflicted emotion.

  The white clouds roiled within the gazing ball, and when they lifted, a stone construction emerged, a great fortress on the edge of a wilderness. Eydis looked down on the stronghold from a far distance, so its details were unclear. But she could see on one tower the banner of a black raven flapping in the breeze. Although the aviads, minohides, and undead soldiers manning the walls were like tiny crawling ants, one of those moving dots was identifiable. The cloaked figure of Varian Nakul paced the battlements, the amulet of his dark master glowing at his neck. He was busily giving orders, preparing his men.

  What were they preparing for? But Eydis knew the answer to that question. She had seen too many visions, dreamed too many dreams to be ignorant of what lay ahead. Nakul’s army was readying for the arrival of the Raven King, by now surely unleashed from his tomb by the scepter. They prepared for the coming of the oracle’s army and the clash of the forces of good and evil.

  Eydis’s jaw tightened. The final fight was swiftly approaching, and she wasn’t there for it. Her friends were doomed to destruction without the mistress of masks at their side. She knew that with a certainty. But here she was, foolishly trapped in the wizard’s tower, with no way to reach them. There was a powerful gate in this tower that could transport her immediately from this place to the very walls of Endguard. She knew the gate’s use because she had stumbled into it once before by accident. The means of escape was frustratingly close.

  But she was helpless to reach it, bound by endless circular walls. In a flash of anger, she tensed to throw the gazing ball to the floor. She imagined it shattering satisfyingly into a million pieces.

  “Temper, temper. Smashing a thousand-year-old magical artifact will not save your friends.”

  Eydis started at the smoothly feminine voice seemingly coming from nowhere. Replacing the crystal on the table, she spun around just in time to see a wispy ethereal form emerge from the far wall, walking effortlessly through stone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Eydis gaped. The last person she had expected to see right now was the White Lady who had haunted the catalysts’ steps since the beginning of their adventures.
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  But there was no denying the familiar figure. She looked the same as she had the last time they met, a faintly glowing insubstantial figure dressed in flowing white, a silver circlet around her head.

  “What are you doing here?” Eydis demanded. “How did you get in?”

  The White Lady raised a pale eyebrow as if to remind her she had just witnessed the spirit passing through solid stone.

  “I think a better question would be why are you still here?” the ghost observed.

  She circled Eydis, her long white robes trailing across the floor. “Isn’t this a pretty picture?” she murmured. “A feeble little bird caught in a cage of its own making.”

  “I didn’t create the spell holding me here,” Eydis said defensively.

  “No?”

  The ghost dropped her eyes to the lifeless form lying on the floor between them. The wizard was still concealed beneath the rug Eydis had draped over him, but his feet stuck out the end.

  “If you did not construct the lock, you certainly threw away the key,” the spirit pointed out.

  Eydis’s face reddened. “Never mind my mistakes. What brings you here? What new opportunity have you found to meddle in affairs that don’t concern you?”

  “Meddle? I seem to recall you catalysts have been happy enough to accept my ‘meddling’ in the past. Did I not save the life of your dryad friend when he lay wounded and dying on my island? Did I not generously offer to remove the tracing mark of your stubborn barbarian when the oracle betrayed him? I asked no payment for the former and, for the latter, only the gift of a small trinket.”

  “The golden scepter of power was no ‘trinket,’” answered Eydis. “It was the means by which Rathnakar could free himself from his prison. Doubtless you knew that.”

  The White Lady shrugged a pale shoulder. “Was it indeed? A pity you let it fall out of your hands then. Some might find that extremely careless.”

  Eydis wouldn’t be drawn into explaining about the assassin and the other reasons for her failure. “Don’t deflect my questions,” she said. “You choose a suspicious hour to come to the tower. What is your connection to the wizard?”

  The White Lady tilted her head to one side, regarding Eydis with cool amusement. “Very well, I will answer you. I have no secrets.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “One eternal senses when another passes from the earthly realm. On becoming aware of Torvald’s end, I knew I must arrive on the scene ahead of any other interested parties, to ensure his most prized possessions were handled with the proper respect.”

  Torvald. Only now he was dead did Eydis finally have a name for the wizard.

  “You came to pilfer his things?” she asked.

  The ghost said, “Torvald’s treasures are not common items to be valued in gold. These are magical tools from ages past, powerful objects not easily obtained.”

  “And power is always your first aim,” Eydis challenged.

  “Isn’t it everybody’s?” The ghost’s expression was unapologetic.

  Eydis opened her mouth to argue but thought better of it. An idea was forming in her mind. Maybe she could use the White Lady’s greed for her own purposes.

  “The wizard’s possessions are of no interest to me,” she told the spirit. “You can take anything you want, and I will not oppose you, on one condition. You will break the spell the wizard placed on this chamber and help me escape.”

  The ghost’s lips twitched up at one corner, but her eyes remained as calculating as ever.

  “You bargain with what does not belong to you,” she said. “Torvald’s magical tools are not yours to give away. Neither do you, a puny mortal, have the power to prevent my taking them.”

  As if to prove her point, she paused before a near table and reached out as if to pick up a delicate box worked in silver that rested at its edge.

  Eydis didn’t know whether there was any significant magic attached to the box, but she did know if she let the ghost claim even one item, she would lose her bargaining position.

  Suddenly remembering she wore the wizard’s oversized ring on her thumb, she threw out her hand toward the White Lady. She didn’t know how she did it or what instinct guided her. But she willed the ring to come to life as it had when Torvald used it. The ring glowed blue, and a streak of light shot from it, striking the ghost woman. Instantly the White Lady was caught, frozen in the act of reaching for the silver box.

  Helpless to speak or move, the ghost could only shoot a furious look in Eydis’s direction.

  Eydis understood the surprised outrage flaring in her victim’s eyes. She herself knew all too well the feeling of being paralyzed by the ring’s power. She loosened her grip, experimenting with the ring’s strength. When she had eased back her hold sufficiently to allow her captive control of her facial muscles, the White Lady spat. “You will force no bargain from me. Unlike you, I can afford to wait for time to do its work. Eventually you will run out of food and drink in this place and starve. On your death, the ring will lose its power source and I will be released.”

  “True,” Eydis admitted. “It’s only a question of time. But I promise you I will not die quickly. And I’m betting you don’t want to wait here in this tower, trapped in magical bonds, for as long as it takes.”

  The ghost regained her composure. “My patience is as eternal as myself. I’m prepared to wait.”

  Eydis had to admire her calmness. But she also noticed a flicker of uncertainty in her opponent’s eyes. She took a guess at its cause.

  “The longer you and I stay locked in this debate, the more likely it becomes that another of your kind, also sensing the wizard’s demise, will come to rob the tower of the magical tools you so badly want.”

  He could see the White Lady considering her words. “What are the terms of our agreement?” the ghost finally asked.

  Eydis shrugged. “Simple. You can have anything in this tower, except the ring on my finger. It has proven useful, and I might have need of its tricks where I’m going. In return, I desire only my freedom. Help me out of this prison.”

  The ghost weighed her offer. “Done,” she said. “Release me.”

  Eydis didn’t know whether to trust a decision so quickly reached. She had expected further argument. Still, she saw no choice but to take the ghost at her word. She relinquished her hold on the captive. The blue glow faded from the ring, and it became just a heavy piece of jewelry.

  She watched the White Lady cautiously, half expecting some sort of betrayal. But she needn’t have feared. As soon as she was free to move, the ghost woman waved a hand at the far wall. Instantly the barrier shifted, sliding aside to reveal an open doorway.

  “Through that doorway, you will find what I believe you are looking for,” the White Lady said.

  Eydis hesitated, but there was nothing left to learn in this chamber and nothing she wanted to bring with her. Her mission to rescue the scepter had ended before it began. Now she could only hope to join her friends before her absence did any damage.

  She left the ghost woman behind and passed through the doorway into a shadowed hall. With its soaring ceilings and granite pillars, this echoing chamber was similar to the one she had found downstairs on first entering the tower. It was too dark to determine the exact size of the room or guess what mysterious contents it might hold. Right now Eydis was interested in only one thing.

  And there it was across the stretch of open floor, a pale marble archway. Connected to nothing and seemingly leading to nowhere, it looked like a useless thing. But Eydis had passed through the portal once before while pursued by the wizard. It had been her means of escape when last she was here. Approaching the tall arch, she knew what she could expect if she walked through it. A dizzying fall through blackness, followed by a sudden landing on the other side. Whether or not she could control where that other side let out remained to be seen. But she had done it once, if only by accident. Why shouldn’t she repeat the performance by intention?

  She paused
before the open archway to rest a hand against the cool marble and gather her courage. She had grown accustomed to many kinds of danger. But plunging into uncertain nothingness with the possibility of never emerging was an unnatural sort of risk. And there was another, deeper reason to fear what lay on the other side of the portal.

  She felt the White Lady’s eyes on her back and knew the ghost had followed her out of the wizard’s chamber. The pale spirit must have seen her hesitation.

  “It must be unnerving for a mortal to face the prospect of inevitable demise,” the White Lady observed. “Even if she goes to the fate willingly.”

  Eydis said, “If you’re taunting me about the original prophecy of my death in the battle against Rathnakar, you may soon know the bitterness of mortality yourself. Even eternals can die by violence. You are no fool and must realize Rathnakar will not tolerate potential rivals, however weak. If Earth Realm falls beneath his power, it’s only a matter of time until every eternal being is hunted down. It would be in your interests to gather any of your kind you know how to contact and persuade them to join us in a last stand.”

  “Your concern for our well-being is touching,” came the neutral response. “But we have not lived through so many ages without learning how to conceal ourselves and weather the tempests.”

  “Then you won’t intervene on the side of light?”

  “Eternals do not share your concept of good and evil. Rarely do our interests align with those of mortals.”

  Obviously, the icy spirit wouldn’t be moved by arguments for compassion or even for the good of mankind. Eydis gave up, took a deep breath, and stepped through the arched portal.

  Instantly she was swallowed by darkness.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A rushing wind tugged at Eydis’s clothes and whipped her hair into her face. There was a whistling sound in her ears and a dizzying sensation of moving at great speed. She could see nothing through the blackness. Fighting down her fear, she concentrated on the image she had seen inside the wizard’s gazing ball. She imagined the high walls of a fortress at the edge of the Lostlands and the banner of a black raven flapping in the breeze. Briefly she saw it all clearly.