LITMIR.BIZ

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That’s why I intend to have the Salka attack her. I’ve worked out a plan –

      ‘I agree we should make her demise one of our earliest priorities…but only after the death of Honigalus! You must convince the monsters to kill him and his heirs first, Beynor. The circumstances are ideal and such an opportunity may never come again. The destabilization of the Sovereignty is absolutely crucial to our success. But that won’t happen unless Conrig loses his hold on Didion. Do you understand?’

       Yes. Honigalus first, but then Ulla dies.

      A sigh.

       Return to your peaceful slumber, Kilian – as I do my best to tiptoe scatheless through the nightmare I inhabit here. Should I manage to gull the Salka, I’ll pop back into your dreams to inform you how the matter went. If I fail, remember me as you study Darasilo’s worthless collection of baubles – and think of what might have been.

      The brightness and warmth of the endless midsummer daylight hardly penetrated the dank chambers of the great Salka citadel that crouched on the highest point of the Dawntide Isles. After four years of exile in the awful place, Beynor always felt pierced to the bone by cold, no matter how many furs he piled on. He was one-and-twenty years old now, and had enjoyed excellent health when he first came; but he knew he could not survive here much longer. The citadel was an abode fit only for nonhuman grotesques. It drained his bodily strength and weakened his innate talent more and more with each passing day. If he must risk everything now in a bid to restore his lost fortunes, then so be it. He carried a whale-oil lantern as he descended a slippery flight of steps to a corridor that extended well below sea level. The widely spaced jars of luminous marine plankton used by these Salka to illuminate the lower precincts of their refuge gave too meager a light to accommodate human vision. Even the smoky flame of the lantern was inadequate, and Beynor cursed as he threaded his way among numerous stinking black puddles, fed seawater (and noxious little swimmers) by perpetual leaks in the tunnel ceiling.

      At length he reached the anteroom outside the presence chamber of the great trolls known as the Eminences. Six gigantic Salka guards holding granite battlehammers stood before double doors faced with slabs of carved amber and wrought gold. The hanging bowls of glowworms were larger here, giving plenty of light, so the young sorcerer discarded his sputtering lantern, strode forward with as much fortitude as he could muster, and spoke in the harsh tongue of the monsters.

      ‘I am Beynor ash Linndal, rightful Conjure-King of Moss and honored guest of your people, come for an audience with the Eminent Four.’

      Slowly, the amphibians inclined their crested heads and studied him with a gaze like banked smoldering coals. They beheld a man tall and slimly built, having an intense narrow face and long pale hair that had gone stringy in the dampness. His eyes, which seemed at first to be black, were actually darkest green, with a glimmer of exceptional talent in their depths. The regal garments Beynor had worn when fleeing his lost kingdom had long since fallen to rags; and since his nonhuman hosts were unfamiliar with clothing, he had fashioned with his own hands a suit of pieced sea-otter fur, along with a voluminous fox cloak and sturdy boots of seal hide. The sole emblem of monarchy he had brought from Moss, the Royal Sword in its heavily bejeweled scabbard, was girded about his loins.

      Saying nothing, the guards stepped aside and swung the chamber doors wide open. Beynor entered and the doors clanged shut again. He stood with his hands steepled in the Salka gesture of submission, biding his time until he should be recognized by the Eminences.

      The beings who awaited him in the fantastically ornamented undersea cavern lolled on stubby-legged golden platforms, heaped with seaweed, that served them as couches. They were unattended and conversed among themselves in voices like muted thunder, apparently paying no attention to the human newcomer. A low table containing dishes and flasks of outlandish food and drink stood within tentacle-reach. Behind the dais rose a huge mosaic made from multicolored bits of amber and gleaming pearl-shell, depicting a legendary Salka hero. His flexible arms brandished twin obsidian axes, his saucer eyes glared fire-red, and his fanged mouth gaped in a silent roar. The image was framed by amber-bead curtains and lit with hanging crystal globes containing lively phosphorescent organisms.

      Like the champion in the mosaic, each Eminence wore around his thick neck a softly glowing greenish-blue carving suspended from a golden chain: moonstone sigils of the minor kind that drew magical power from the Beaconfolk at the cost of pain to the wearer.

      The Eminences were not royalty, but rather ruling elders chosen by their people for strength of character and proficiency in their separate fields of endeavor. Three of them – the First Judge, the Supreme Warrior, and the Conservator of Wisdom – Beynor had never seen before. As a mere human sorcerer, even one of royal blood who had come bearing a marvelous gift to ensure his welcome, he had been beneath their notice during his enforced stay in the Citadel of the Dawntide Isles. The only one of the Four familiar to Beynor was Master Shaman Kalawnn, pre-eminent adept of his race, who had been an intimate friend of the late Conjure-King Linndal. Unaware that Beynor had murdered his father, Master Kalawnn had agreed to give the deposed young ruler sanctuary after the Great Lights cursed him and stripped him of all but one of the sigils he had used to secure the throne of Moss.

      That single remaining magical moonstone of his, dull and lifeless as it had been since it was first fashioned over a thousand years earlier, rested now on a spindly gold tripod to the right of the dais. Its presence was presumably a tribute to the human who had finally returned it to its original owners. The sigil’s name was Unknown Potency, and it was the most celebrated thing of its kind ever made, priceless at the same time that it was deemed supremely dangerous.

      For long centuries following the damnation of the stone’s Salka creator, the precise manner of the Potency’s activation and operation had been forgotten by other members of the amphibian race. The person who made it – supposedly to be used as the ultimate weapon against the conquering hordes of the Emperor Bazekoy, although the monsters were not certain of this – had in the end failed to empower it.

      Never brought to life, dreaded more than cherished, the Unknown Potency had become an enigmatic symbol of extinct Salka glory. Over the centuries, learned thaumatur-gists among the monsters believed that the sigil might hold the key to unimaginably great magic surpassing that of the Beaconfolk. But none had been brave enough to test it, for fear of the Great Lights’ capricious wrath.

      About a hundred years earlier, through subterfuge, the Unknown Potency and six other notable sigils had passed from the Dawntide Salka into the hands of an extraordinary human wizard named Rothbannon, who used some of the stones to establish himself as the first Conjure-King of Moss. Although Rothbannon did eventually learn the spells that would activate the Unknown Potency, he and his descendants were disinclined to make use of the dubious sigil – as had been Beynor himself, even when the security of his throne was at stake and the fickle Beaconfolk turned against him. As the Great Lights repudiated and cursed the young king, they unaccountably left in his possession the ‘dead’ Unknown Potency, at the same time forbidding him to make use of it, or any other sigil, on pain of instant annihilation. But the Lights had not stopped Beynor from handing over the Unknown to the Salka.

      Nor had they prevented him from engaging in studies concerning the nature of the cryptic stone while he lived in the Dawntide Citadel under Kalawnn’s protection…

      ‘We give you leave to approach us, Beynor,’ the Master Shaman now said, ‘and to speak to me and my august colleagues about your researches.’

      He came forward, and without preamble pointed to the Unknown Potency on its golden tripod. ‘Eminences, I’ve discovered what this thing does.’

      The leaders uttered undignified whoops of astonishment. The Supreme Warrior, who was the largest and most physically imposing of the Four, surged up from his couch and slithered across the dais with astonishing speed. He plucked from its resting place the small object resembling a hard translucent ribbon twisted into the form of a figure eight, and held the thing high while bellowing into Beynor’s impassive face.

      ‘You have discovered the operation of the Unknown Potency? The secret that eluded

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