(eng) Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 03 by The Sword of Bheleu (Retail)

Author:The Sword of Bheleu (Retail) [Bheleu, The Sword of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

The Seer of Weideth had never acquired the knack of using a scrying glass and made do instead with an assortment of divining spells. Every spell he tried gave the same answer; the Dûsarran girl had indeed told the truth.

Garth of Ordunin had destroyed Skelleth for no reason. Furthermore, he had murdered the rightful baron of the village on only the slightest provocation, and killed a score of innocents with no cause at all. The girl had not mentioned that.

The overman had done this with the Sword of Bheleu, which was obviously an artifact of great power. The apparent level of arcane energy was, in fact, so great that no material force could possibly stand against it. There would be no point, therefore, in sending an army to Skelleth; only magic or stealth could hope to deal with such a menace.

The Seer wondered how so dangerous a weapon had been left lying about where any passing overman could pick it up in the first place; one of the Council’s overseers must have been shirking his duties.

It was not, fortunately, his responsibility; he was only liable for the village and the surrounding hills. Since the matter had been brought to his attention, it was his duty to report it—and that was the entirety of his duty.

He gathered together the three village elders; his own powers were too feeble to reach more than a dozen leagues with a message-spell, and he judged that this matter was worthy of the immediate attention of the Chairman of the Council. That was old Shandiph, and a simple divination told the Seer that Shandiph was in Kholis, the capital city of Eramma, which lay more than a hundred leagues to the east. Communicating over such a distance would require three other minds working in concert with his own. He had worked with the elders before, and they had become reasonably adept at this sort of thing.

By the time he returned to the tavern’s common room after divining the Chairman’s location, ready to make the attempt at contact, the messenger from the city was long gone and the elders were waiting for him.

In Kholis, Shandiph was visiting with Chalkara, court wizard to the High King. The two were alone in Chalkara’s velvet-draped chambers, playing caravanserai with an ancient set of hand-carved jade and ivory which the court wizard had inherited from her predecessor, and sampling a golden wine of unknown but venerable vintage that Shandiph had brought with him from a stay in Ur-Dormulk. Shandiph had had more than his share of the wine and was consequently a good sixty coins behind in the game when the image of the Seer of Weideth suddenly appeared on the tapestry Chalkara was leaning her back against.

Startled, the old man dropped his wine glass, scattering the green pieces in all directions and spilling yellow wine across the whites. For a moment both wizards were too busy picking up pieces and sopping up the spill with Shandiph’s cloak to pay any heed to the message.

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