The Wizard Hunters Read Free

Arisilde’s work. “It’s fine.” She held it out, showing him the lights moving deep within the device.
    Gerard took the sphere again and Tremaine leaned over it, frowning as the life faded out of it. She shook her head in annoyance, taking it back from him. “It worked for you before, didn’t it?”
    She shook the sphere again and he hurriedly stopped her. He said, “Perhaps ... I haven’t worked with it in more than ten years.” He blinked, struck by the enormity of the possible disaster. “If that’s the case... We have working spheres to continue the experiment.”
    “You mean it’s forgotten you?” Brows drawn together, Tremaine held it out to him again. “Try to use it while I’m holding it. Something simple.”
    Gerard rested his fingers lightly on the sphere, frowning in concentration. For a moment Tremaine thought nothing would happen. Then a swirl of illusory light drifted across the fine old carpet near the hearth, sparkling like fayre dust, making both the fire in the grate and the electric bulb in the lamp dim and shiver.
    Gerard let out his breath and released the sphere. The light vanished. “It still knows me but it apparently wants contact with you also.” He met her eyes, his face serious. “Tremaine, I hate to ask you this, but. . . it’s vital for the continuation of the experiment. We’re so close to success—”
    Tremaine looked around at the library, gesturing vaguely. She couldn’t afford to get involved in anything right now. “I’m sort of in the middle of something—”
    “—I know it’s dangerous, but if you could—”
    Dangerous . Tremaine stared at him. That’s perfect . She nodded. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

F   Chapter 2   F
    Isle of Storms, off the Southern Coast of the Symai
    “ W e’ll see you at the moonrise,” Ilias said, and thought, I hope .
    In the water below, Halian was balanced carefully on the bench of the dinghy, bobbing in the ripples that washed against the rocky wall of the sea cave. He was a big man, weathered by sun and sea, his long graying hair tied back in a simple knot; Ilias had never thought of him as old, but right now worry made Halian show his years. “Are you two sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked, handing up the coil of rope.
    Ilias chuckled, reaching down out of the crevice for it. “I’m never sure we know what we’re doing.” The jagged hole of the cave entrance lay only twenty paces or so beyond the bow of Halian’s little boat, allowing in wan morning light and the dense fog that lay like a wool blanket over the blue-gray water. The rock arched high enough to allow entrance to their ship the Swift , but the bottom was dangerous with submerged wrecks.
    Longer ago than Ilias or anybody else alive could remember, the back of the cave had been a harbor, part of an old empty city that wove through the caves, much of it underwater. But now the stone docks and breakwaters were obstructed with the wooden skeletons of wrecked ships, all jammed together in one rotting mass. The stink of decay hung in the cool dank air, concentrated in the fog that some wizard from ages ago had caused to form around the island. The sudden gales and bad currents that frequently trapped ships and drew them in to their deaths gave it the name the Isle of Storms.
    Halian didn’t appreciate the attempt to lighten the mood. “You know how I feel,” he said seriously, sitting down again in the boat as it rocked gently in the low waves.
    “It’ll be all right,” Ilias told him, exasperated. When Halian had brought this up to Giliead last night, it had caused one of those long polite arguments between them where both parties are actually on the same side and there is no hope of resolution. Ilias had no idea how it had worked itself out; he had gotten fed up and gone to sit out on the wall of the goat pen with the herdsmen.
    From the crevice above Ilias’s head, Giliead’s voice demanded, “What did he say?”
    Ilias