The stand held a pair of candles and a small icon, though the face of it was turned away and Dwyrin could not see what it represented. The dead man muttered as he walk’ed, and after six wakings, Dwyrin began to make out the words of his captor. They were a jumble, single words repeated over and over, short phrases, a long rambling internal monologue. On the seventh waking, Dwyrin’s mind had cleared enough that his body could weakly tell him that it was ravenous with hunger. Too, he was aware enough to realize that Khiron was reminding himself, over and over, of all the things that he had seen or done when he was alive.
“K-kk-hiron…” Dwyrin’s voice stumbled. His tongue felt enormous, choking the breath from him. “… hungry • • •”
The dead man paused in his endless pacing and turned, hooded eyes focusing on the boy behind the tiny grate. Khiron moved closer, a dark bird, head bobbing as it turned sideways and peered into the little cell. A simulacrum of a smile fleeted over his face, a mask put on and then taken off. A bone-pale hand reached out and touched the bars.
“Hungry? Why, I had all but forgotten you, little mouse. Your belly must be quite empty now. It would not do for” you to starve or waste away. Food you shall have.“
Khiron straightened and his body was tensed with energy now. He passed to the door, a gray cloud in the butter-yellow light of the room. In a moment the room was empty, the door shut. Dwyrin crouched at the entrance to his cell, a thin arm snaked through the grate and groping around the outside. His fingers found the sconce of a candleholder, rusting and ancient to his touch. Stretching upward he managed to catch the dripping wax on his fingertip. The heat of the hot wax flashed through his arm and, for a moment, sight threatened to return. For a bare instant the room flared unimaginably brighter as Dwyrin’s eyes took in the radiance of both the candlelight and the shimmering power that coiled endlessly behind the physical light.
Then the thin band of metal around his throat turned freezing cold and his head snapped back in a howl of pain. The burning ice around his neck choked off all thought, all breath, and plunged him into an abyss of cold, filled with grinding ice and a bottomless black lake.
“Food…” a distant voice hissed. There was a clanging sound and hands like spiders clawed at him, dragging him out of the warm cocoon of unconsciousness that had been wrapped around him. His throat still burned with the cold fire, though it was greatly muted now. A bowl filled with some sweet-smelling porridge was pushed into his hands. Trembling, he ate from it with his fingers. The porridge was thick and had chopped nuts and figs in it. There was more water in the ewer. After cleaning the bowl, he looked up, exhausted with the effort. Khiron was crouched before him, long cape lying in a puddle of storm-gray around him. The dead man’s head was cocked to one side again and his deep-yellow eyes surveyed the starving boy curiously. Dwyrin bowed his head and pushed the empty bowl away. Weariness filled his body from his feet to the top of his head.
“Sleep…” said Khiron, his voice growing distant even in the space of that word.
The cell door rattled and swung open. Khiron crouched outside again, snaking a long arm in to drag the boy out. Dwyrin shook his head to clear the muzziness of sleep. The sharp smell of the dead man tickled at his nose and he woke fully.
“Time to go upstairs,” Khiron growled, his voice and body equally tense. He shoved a bundle of clothing into Dwyrin’s hands. “Dress in this.”
Dwyrin stripped out of his tunic and breeches. The new clothing was a wadded lump. In it were trousers, a shirt, a cloth belt, and a felt cap. The fabric was plain and gray, with a little embroidery at the cuffs and hems. It was a little too large for him, particularly in his current state. The dead man watched him closely but without overt malice for the time it took him to dress. Flat-bottomed sandals completed the garb. Done, Khiron surveyed him up and down before pushing him toward the iron door.
“No time to dawdle,” he rasped-his voice tighter than usual.
They ascended the long passageway again, returning to the office filled with candles. The stout man, the Bygar, was still seated at his desk, but now two others joined him. Khiron guided Dwyrin to the side of the desk, facing the two new men. Dwyrin felt the dead man recede to the edge of the room, but he did not leave, he merely became less obtrusive. The men in the room had been speaking but had fallen silent upon the arrival of the boy. Now they surveyed him, and he them. The first of the two men was large, taller than Khiron, with a bristling beard and great whiskers. His black hair was curled and fell in ringlets past his broad shoulders. His arms were thick and corded with muscle. He was clad in heavy woolen garments, like a merchant, but they sat uneasily upon him. Dark piercing eyes scanned Dwyrin up and down, then the chin lifted in appraisal, a hand adorned with many rings stroking the lushness of his beard.
“Barely a sprig of a boy.” Whiskers’s voice was like a trumpet, echoing in the confined space of the office. “He should still be watching the sheep, not about on a man’s work.”
The other man was well built too, but next to his companion, he seemed a sapling to an ancient oak. Where Whiskers wore his clothes like a stone, this one was dressed in a flowing black robe of some shining material, with dark cotton trousers and arms graced by many bands of dark gold and red and amber. He too had dark hair, but it hung long and straight on his back, bound back by a silver fillet. His face too was long and straight, with arching eyebrows and a sharp nose. He was clean-shaven, without even the shadow of a beard. Whiskers exuded an aura of strength and vitality, almost abrim with energy. This one was cold and distant, like the ice on a mountaintop. Looking upon, him Dwyrin met his eyes for an instant and quailed away. They were deep pools of darkness, filled with horror and suffering.
Dwyrin felt faint, realizing that if the othersight were still upon him, the true shape of the creature across from him might be revealed, and that knowledge might destroy his mind. Being trapped in the same room with this monster and Khiron seemed to drain all air from the space. Dwyrin could now dimly sense the tightly controlled fear in both the Bygar and, behind him, Khiron. The school and the sun on the bricks in front of the dining hall seemed infinitely far away.
“He has potential, Dracul.” The voice of the creature in black was smooth and cultured. His Greek was flawless and filled with an ironic lilt. “Your servant has done well. You make our journey not only profitable but pleasant as well.”
Dracul made a half bow in his chair, acknowledging the compliment.
“Your presence is a boon as well, Lord Dahak. I know that you are a collector of rare items and so I thought of you when this young man was brought to me. He carries Power within him, waiting to be channeled, tapped, used.”
Dahak nodded, his eyes flickering in the candlelight. “Show us.”›
The Bygar nodded to Khiron, who stepped up behind Dwyrin and rested his bony hands on the boy’s shoulders. The dead man leaned close, his gray presence blotting out the candlelight in the room.
“Now, dear boy, I will lift the ban from you a little. I want you to call fire from the stone.” A gnarled finger drew Dwyrin’s chin around and pointed to a stand of bronze set against the wall beside the entry. Upon it sat an oblong of dark flint. The wall hangings had been taken down, the carpets rolled back from the foot of the stand.
“Not too much, now. Just enough to show our guests.”
A fingernail slid between the chain around Dwyrin’s neck and his skin. The edge, so sharp, cut into his neck, drawing a bead of blood. The veil that had lain over Dwyrin lifted a little, revealing the room awash in a swirl of dark purple, midnight blue, and a nameless color. By utter effort, Dwyrin kept from looking to his left, where Dahak lounged on a divan. The echo of his presence in the room was enough to distort the flow of power around him, drawing it into himself. The flint block was inert, no so much as a spark of its ancestral fire remaining within it.