Changing Of The Guard (Book 6) by Ron Collins

Author:Ron Collins [Collins, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Skyfox Publishing
Published: 2015-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Garrick found himself in a chamber that was roughly square in shape. It was a library of some kind. He was confused, but alert. Finding nothing of immediate danger here, he checked his link to the plane of magic. It was still there.

He calmed himself.

The muscles across his back ached, and he felt empty inside. His palms were flayed. His life force was drained so deeply that it wasn’t healing him now.

Garrick scanned the room.

Each corner was beveled to make it eight-sided, and each of the longer walls was lined with wooden shelves stained to a golden-brown glow. They were filled with tomes and manuscripts. A full-height closet stood in one corner. A maroon rug covered the floor, its weave reminding him of those that came from Farvane. The rug’s padding was thick. It drank up sound so well his movements felt slow. The books were of varied sizes and colors, some bound in leather, others simple loose-leaf collections.

The only opening was a doorway across the room.

The trail to Ettril Dor-Entfar, and, therefore to Will, led through that door.

Something didn’t seem right, though. His skin crawled with an eerie sense of recognition. Garrick felt like he had been here before.

He stepped across the rug and into the doorway.

The knob turned smoothly, and he pushed the door open to find another room, this one larger, perhaps a sitting room.

The clipped sound of a spoon on porcelain echoed from inside.

Then again.

The floor here was polished hardwood, and his footsteps rang out as he stepped inside.

Raw sunlight spilled through windows that were taller than wide. The sun was high, its rays, loaded with dust motes that floated in ghostly waves, were dagger strikes against the linen tablecloth. A high-backed chair sat at the nearest end of a long table, facing away from him. More chairs sat empty along its length. The chair at the table’s foot was empty, also. A stick of incense smoldered from an otherwise empty crystal vase at the table’s center.

The place smelled of ginger, with a touch of mint—the flavor of Sunathri’s magic, he remembered.

Garrick knit his brows.

“Will?” he said, his voice echoing.

The porcelain clatter came again.

From the other side of the chair, Garrick caught the wisp of gray hair. The memory of Ettril’s face in Sunathri’s communications spell came to him.

“Where is the boy, Ettril?” Garrick said.

His only answer was another think clink.

Garrick stepped forward.

“You can’t run forever,” he said.

As the angle changed, though, Garrick saw more of the person sitting in the chair. The man’s hair was pure white, almost silver in the natural light of the sun. His skin looked thin and grainy, as if it was cast of dried sugar and as if a good rain might melt it away. The man’s hand shook as he moved the spoon to his lips. The meal was a vegetable broth of some kind.

Garrick’s heart pounded.

It was another trap. It had to be. But, what harm could this man do him?

“Who are you?” he asked as he stood taller.

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