Forsaken House by Richard Baker Read Free Book Online

of simply hiding it again.”
    He exchanged a dark look with Quastarte and understood that the old loremaster shared his true concern. The raiders had known their way around Tower Reilloch quite well. They might have prepared their attack for months, secretly scrying the Tower’s defenses … or perhaps they had had assistance from someone familiar with the Tower’s secrets.
    “True,” Quastarte said, thinking aloud. “Of course, that suggests to me that perhaps you should remove it from the tower entirely. Do you think you might absent yourself for a short time?”
    “If you are certain you will not need me here,” Araevin replied. He found a silk handkerchief in his pocket and carefully wrapped the telkiira within. “I could go to Lord Miritar’s estate and visit with Ilsevele and her father for a time. He is a councilor of the realm, and deserves a firsthand report of what happened here. And it would seem perfectly innocuous for Ilsevele and I to go to Elion for a time. No one would think it out of the ordinary, would they?”
    The old loremaster grasped Araevin by the shoulder and said, “We may be jumping at shadows, but at this moment I would rather take too many precautions than too few.”
    “Do not hesitate to summon me back if I am needed,” Araevin replied. He stood and slipped the small, silk-wrapped stone into his belt pouch. “Once I am away from
    here, I will examine the stone more closely to see if I can determine what is hidden inside. It may shed some light on who our attackers were, and what they intend to do with the shard.”
    “And I will search through Philaerin’s tomes and journals to see if he makes any mention of it.” Quastarte rose as well. “Come. Before you leave, we must summon the other mages and tell them what has been taken from the Tower.”
    Nurthel Floshin stretched wide his black, leathery wings, and dropped closer to the snow-covered ground. He was in a hurry, and he beat his powerful wings tirelessly against the winter sky. Nurthel cut a striking figure, a demonic elf with scarlet-scaled skin and large batlike wings, clad in armor of enchanted golden scales, one eye covered by a rune-scribed patch.
    Miles behind him, the rest of his raiding party proceeded on foot, too heavily burdened with their plunder to fly. It was not a particularly good day for flying, anyway. The clouds were low and thick, and freezing rain was falling all across the rugged hills and thick forests of the Delimbiyr Vale.
    Nurthel allowed himself a smile of pleasure. The Gatekeeper’s Crystal gave him the perfect excuse to hurry on ahead of the other fey’ri. He carried the artifact inside his golden scale shirt, wrapped tightly in a leather pouch. He started gaining altitude again, as the foothills of the Nether Mountains began to mount skyward from the river vale. His mistress had chosen her stronghold with an eye toward remoteness and isolation. None but the most determined—or foolhardy—of travelers passed that way. There the Delimbiyr turned east, fed by numerous streams known as the Talons—swift, racing rivers that descended from the snow-covered mountains to the north.
    Nurthel followed the Starsilver, the second of those
    streams, and after a few miles found a round hilltop rising up before him. Its slopes were shaped in graceful terraces inundated by the forest, and old white ramparts green with moss and vines climbed across the hillside. Glaurachyndaar, a great city of fallen Eaerlann, had once been known as Myth Glaurach, City of Scrolls. Crumbling colonnades and empty buildings choked with rubble were all that remained of the elven city, but deep catacombs led to hidden armories and jagged chasms beneath the hill.
    He wheeled once and dived down through the snow-clad fir trees, alighting in a ruined old courtyard. He shook his wings vigorously, ignoring the quiver of fatigue from his rapid flight, and folded them behind his back. Nurthel made his way through an old archway into the