Janny Wurts Sorcerer's Legacy

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with candlestands. As he arrayed them on the floor by the girl's feet, Elienne
noticed the bases were carved of black stone, each one a squat, leering demon.
The girl seemed indifferent to the ugliness around her.
Faisix lifted the flask from the table and anointed his left hand. Bloody,
dripping fingers traced a line from candlestand to candlestand, enclosing
Minksa within a red triangle. The torches cast grotesque, hunched shadows
about him as he bent and scribed a wide pentagram, then framed the
configuration with runes.
The child stood motionless while Faisix set bluish-white candles into the
demon stands and lit them, each with a separate incantation. When he had
finished, he stood within the pentagram and spoke a word guttural with
consonants. The gory tracings upon the floor sizzled, then burst into flame.
That moment, Minksa cried out, like a sleeper wakened from a nightmare. The
sound twisted Elienne's heart.
Pendaire's Regent was a monster, to shape his snares with a child. Better she
lose Cinndel's son than suffer the rule of such a man.
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'Minksa? Elienne abouted. 'Recite Ma'Diere's Laws!
Do you know them?'
The child seemed stunned, as though the rhythmic rise and fall of Faisix's
chant robbed her of hearing.
Elienne drew breath to repeat the Laws herself, but poisonous fumes from the
candles choked her throat. A
spasm of coughing mangled the words beyond recogni-
tion. Half-smothered by the smoke, Elienne blinked watering eyes and, in the
sulfurous glare of flamelight, saw Faisix raise his arm. The darkness of
oblivion appeared before him, framing a doorway in the air.
'Come here, Minksa.' His voice was barely above a whisper, yet the child
heard. She raised her head and took a slow, tranced step forward. For a
moment, Elienne saw her outline blue. Then Minksa crossed the threshold into
night.
The blackness flickered, suddenly suffused with streaks of dull red. The girl
screamed once, high and thin like a wounded rabbit. She swayed, and her legs
buckled as her senses left her. Faisix caught her body as it fell through the
gate he had fashioned. Her limbs dangled from his arms as he laid her like a
corpse at his feet.
Flayed by emotion, Elienne found her free hand clenched fiercely around the
mirrowstone. The jewel was drenched with sweat, and her palm ached where the
gold setting had gouged her skin.
'The girl is not dead,' said Faisix conversationally. 'See for yourself.' The
Regent inclined his head toward the triangle, and following his nod, Elienne
saw a pale, spectral shape move within. Faisix's sorcery had separated spirit
from flesh. Imprisoned by the red barriers of the warding spell, Minksa's soul
desperately sought escape, to no avail. Elienne shivered, stirred to anger. As
Faisix
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initiated his next invocation, Elienne sought the knotted cords that bound her
right wrist behind her back.
The torches streamed and flicked out. Only the ensor-
celed candles remained alight, flames casting sickly, greenish halos in the
dark. Sweat slicked Elienne's back, and the tendons ached around stressed
joints. Strain as she might, the knots stayed just beyond reach. Beyond the
perimeter of his pentagram, Faisix had scribed a second triangle, and above
it, still another dark gateway.
The name he called into the obsidian void was that of
Darion's sister, Avelaine, who had died of a fall from a horse at age fifteen.
With a leap of horrified intuition, Elienne perceived the
Regent's intent. If Faisix merged Minksa's hapless flesh with the spirit of
the Prince's dead sister, he would create for himself a formidable weapon.
Half-crazed with con-
cern for Darion, Elienne wrenched desperately against her bonds. But the knots
held.
Sparks flared through shifting billows of smoke. Elienne bit her lip to keep
from crying out in frustration.
The Regent bent over Minksa's possessed body and applied the arts of
shape-change. As though aware of his meddling, the girl's spirit beat like a
moth against the sorcery that confined her. Elienne watched in growing
apprehension as the girl's fleshy contours altered under
Faisix's touch. The apparition that finally rose to its feet before him bore
little resemblance to the plain child lathered by Jieles. Luridly underlit by
guttering candle
flames, Elienne beheld a tall young woman with rich, dark hair and a
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determined jawline. A jeweled pin glittered at her throat, and her slim figure
was expensively clad in riding leather of masculine cut.
'Brother, why have you called me back?' she demanded in a clear, imperious
voice.
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Hearing the words, Elienne realized that Faisix had himself assumed the
Prince's image. When the two were seen together, the likeness to the royal
features in the woman's profile was unmistakable.
'I have summoned you because I am in grave danger, sister.'
The Princess glanced aside, as though to examine the hellish glow of the
ciphers that ringed her round. But
Faisix recalled her straying attention. 'Avelaine! Will you listen? My life is
threatened.'
Avelaine faced him with an imperious toss of her coroneted head. Dark hair
glanced like raven feathers in the dim, smoky room. 'Darion you have changed
much since I saw you last.'
'I haven't time to idle talk. I am pursued by a man shape-changed to my
likeness. Not even Taroith can tell us apart.' Faisix added a gesture of
theatrical vehemence.
'Bring him down for me, sister. I offer the chance to avenge the death of one
dear to us both.'
Avelaine frowned. 'Who?. I think you lie, your Grace.
The brother I knew would never disturb the dead. Not even for his own iife's
sake.'
'Ielond lost his life for the sake of the succession. Must
I be murdered as you were, or will you help?'
Avelaine's eyes narrowed. 'Faisix? She said suddenly, 'Ma'Diere have mercy,
was my death not enough?' and took a sharp step back. The heel of her riding
boots knocked inadvertently into a candlestand, and, as though wakened, the
carved base came alive.
E!ienne gasped. Though fumes scoured her throat, she shouted frantically,
'Avelaine, it's a trap!'
But the woman in the triangle seemed deaf to her warning. The demon shape
bloated like a soap bubble.
White and foul as a slug, it burst, releasing a writhing coil
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