Errand of Mercy by Roger Moore Read Free Book Online

something at his throat. A moment later he held up a quarter-inch-wide ball of crystal, a pendant on a thin gold chain. “Hmm. It would seem that Lady Eidola is not within a mile of us at the moment. Unless …” He carefully took off the pendant and held it out to Jacob, who took it in his hand. The crystal pendant remained as it was.
    “She’s definitely not around,” Kern said, discouraged. “Sometimes magical things don’t work when they touch me, because my body is so anti-magical.” He took back the necklace, then sighed and rubbed his face with a thick hand. “If she’s not here, this is bad news. We’d better start thinking now about ways to find and rescue our lady.”
    “Find the nearest bloodforge,” suggested Trandon in a low voice. He stood across the room by the bookcase, peering at the books on the shelves.
    “Well,” said Jacob, doffing his own helmet and running a hand through his blond curls. “That would be mage-king Aetheric’s, now wouldn’t it? Shall we just ask to see it, or should we fight our way in?”
    “Don’t be facetious,” said Kern darkly. “We could really use Aleena’s help about now. Noph, what was that you said earlier, about Aleena not wanting to come along?”
    Noph blinked. “Oh. She said … she said …” He paused, then continued, “She said she had several reasons.” He straightened his shoulders. “I’m sure they must have been important.”
    Miltiades’s voice rumbled out from his room, an angry edge to it. “Aleena may have had good reasons to stay behind, but I do not see why she could not have told me what they were. Why should she have confided in you and not me? I do not entirely trust the sorceress.”
    Noph’s mouth fell open. “Not trust… ! But she’s Aleena Paladinstar. She’s a friend of the Blackstaff!”
    From his room Miltiades snorted. “To my thinking that makes her less trustworthy, not more. In any event, she is not here, and the way we came is now destroyed.”
    The other men in the room looked away from Noph. Jacob nodded soberly. “This does present a problem when we’re finally ready to go home,” he said.
    “Or ready to communicate with anyone outside this city,” said Miltiades. He came out of his room. In his right hand was a small jeweled mirror. “I speak with my wife Evaine in Phlan using this device, but I cannot do it now. Something is blocking the magical link between this mirror and Phlan, probably the same force that prevents Khelben from scrying on this city.”
    “I’ll tell you what else bothers me,” said Jacob, wandering over to another side door as Miltiades went back into his room.
    “That they knew we were coming,” said Trandon, not looking up from a book he had picked out.
    “Exactly,” said Jacob, seizing the door’s handle and pushing it open. “That is exactly it. I’d love to—Great Tyr!”
    Jacob was not fast enough to dodge the blow he saw coming. It knocked him back into the room and sent him crashing into a chair, which broke into pieces under his armored weight.
    Kern reacted instantly, seizing his warhammer and tearing it free of his belt. He knocked aside another chair to get to Jacob, ready for battle. Trandon dropped his book and snatched his staff. Miltiades came out of his room again, shield and hammer in his hands but missing his helmet. Noph was too startled to do more than stand and watch.
    From the doorway Jacob had tried to enter stepped a tall, bald, bare-chested man. He stooped to pass through the seven-foot doorframe. His skin was a maroon red, the color of dark clay, but he was far larger and more broadly built than any normal human. To Noph, staring in amazement, he seemed more than eight feet tall, with enormous muscles that properly belonged on a wild beast. A little giant, Noph thought.
    Seeing that Jacob was merely stunned, Kern charged the huge red man. He swung his hammer in a roundhouse blow.
    The red man caught the hammerhead in the palm of one enormous