Journey into the Void by Margaret Weis Read Free Book Online Page A

The magical light glinted off their swords and helms and their chain-mail halberds, illuminated the tabards of their high office that they wore over their armor. They were thorough in their search, taking their time, inspecting every building.
    â€œVrykyl!” Ulaf cried aloud. Investing the word with the wings of magic, he sent it flying off. “Vrykyl!” he said again. “The Tubby Tabby!”
    He waited a tense moment, then had the satisfaction of seeing the heads of the battle magi jerk up, see them whip around, searching for the source of the voice that seemed to explode in their ears.
    â€œHurry!” Ulaf urged them.
    The battle magi didn’t need the urging. They were already running through the streets.
    Ulaf turned and dashed back down the stairs. He had gone about halfway when he heard an agonized cry—the shrill, high-pitched cry of a pecwae.

S HADAMEHR CAME SLOWLY TO CONSCIOUSNESS. HE KNEW NOTHING except that he felt weak and nauseated. He was lying flat on his back on a hard, cold surface, with flickering yellow light glowing somewhere above him. He wondered what had happened to him, and started to try to remember. Fear stopped him. He was afraid to go back there. Afraid to remember. Something horrible had happened. The shadow of the horror lay across his heart, and he did not dare try to look into the past.
    A strange and unpleasant warmth suffused his body, as though the blood had been taken out of his veins, heated in a cauldron, then poured back in. A sickening, metallic taste burned in the back of his mouth and it made him gag. His stomach roiled and cramped. He retched, but not having eaten since breakfast, there was nothing in his stomach to purge. He lay back, shivering and weak.
    Memory returned, unwanted, unbidden. He reached out to pick up the young king, to save him from the Regent, who had been taken over by a Vrykyl. He had his hands on the child, was lifting him off his feet. Terrible, searing pain flashed through his body. He looked into the child’s face and saw a skull. He looked into the child’s eyes and saw the Void.
    The young king of Vinnengael was the Vrykyl.
    Shadamehr could feel again his sense of helpless horror and revulsion, but he couldn’t remember much else, for the ice-cold fire of the wound had started to spread through his body.
    As for where he was now, he couldn’t have said if his life depended on it.
    â€œAnd maybe it does,” he mumbled, trying to push himself up to a sitting position. “The Vrykyl will be searching for me. I know his secret. He can’t let me live. Ugh! Blast!”
    Shadamehr collapsed back onto the floor, lay there gasping, chill sweat running over his body. He heard a moan; murmured, broken speech. Shadamehr’s vision was blurry, his eyes dazzled from staring into the lanternlight. He turned over, managed to prop himself up on one elbow, searched for the voice.
    He let out a shivering breath. “Alise!”
    She lay next to him, her hand—limp and motionless—on the floor. She seemed, in her last moments, to have reached out to him.
    His own fingers trembling, he brushed aside the vibrant red curls that trailed over her face. His breath caught in his throat.
    Alise was a beauty who made nothing of her beauty. She scoffed at the notion that she was beautiful and would laugh heartily at the sonnets and songs written in her praise, much to the discomfiture of many an earnest young swain. She had a sharp tongue, a temper to match her fiery hair, a quick wit, and she used all these as a porcupine uses its prickles to hide a loyal, compassionate heart.
    Her beauty was gone, destroyed. Lesions split the soft skin of her cheeks, oozed blood that trailed down her neck. Hideous pustules covered her forehead and one eye, which was swollen shut. Her lips were cracked and blackened. The hand, reaching to him, clenched in pain, the nails digging into her flesh. She moaned again, a sob of