“What of the Valheru?” asked Tomas. “Can some other force imagine they can do anything with the Lifestone, use it somehow, without having to deal with those trapped within the stone?”
Pug said, “The problem is that the only source of lore we have is what you remember, from the memory of AshenShugar.” Tomas possessed the memories of the ages-dead Dragon Lord whose armor he had donned during the Riftwar. “But he alone of the Valheru had nothing to do with the creation of the Lifestone. He knew something of its nature, something of its purpose, that it was to be a weapon to destroy the new gods, but beyond that he was ignorant of its nature.”
“So you suspect that someone else, whoever is behind this demon’s entering our world, may have a purpose for the Lifestone that hasn’t occurred to us?” said Miranda. “Could they simply grab the Lifestone and use it as a weapon, the way a man might use a sword or crossbow?”
“That,” said Pug, “I do not know. It’s clear, though, that someone is prepared to try.”
“What do we do?” asked Miranda.
Pug said, “We wait and study this thing, and see what they do next.”
Miranda said, “What about Calis?”
Tomas said, “We wait.”
Miranda said, “I want to return to look for him and the others.”
Pug said, “I know you do, but it would be foolish. They will have moved on, and whoever we face, whoever is left alive there will be on guard and looking for him as well. The second you pop into existence there, whatever magic is left will fall on you like a burning house.”
Nakor said, “I’ll go.”
Pug turned and said, “What?”
“I will go,” he said slowly. “Get me to Krondor and I will get a ship and I will sail down to that place he left his boat and I will get him back.”
Pug said, “You’re serious?”
Nakor said, “I told this one”—he motioned to Sho Pi—“we had to go on a trip. This is just a bit farther than I thought.”
He grinned a moment, then the smile faded. In the most serious tones anyone had heard Nakor use, he said, “A great and terrible storm is coming, Pug. It is black and deadly and we don’t understand yet what is behind it. Everyone here has a duty. I do, too: to find Calis and the others and bring back whatever they’ve learned after Miranda left.”
Aglaranna said, “Take from us whatever we can give if it will help you find our son.”
Nakor said, “Just get me to Krondor.”
Pug said, “Any particular place?”
Nakor thought a moment. “The court of the Prince will do.”
Pug nodded, then to Sho Pi he said, “You too?”
“I follow my master.”
Pug said, “Very well; join hands.”
They did, and Pug wove a spell, and suddenly they were gone.
Calis was unconscious and Erik carried him as he would a child. Bobby was barely conscious, and leaned on Alfred’s shoulder. Of the thirty-seven men who had left the deep temple of the Pantathians, nine were alive. Three times they had encountered hostile forces and had to fight. At Calis’s insistence, they had continued on. Despite his demand they leave him, they carried him.
Erik had found a deep fissure in the mountain, from which heat rose in shimmering waves. He had ordered the armor and other items thrown into the fissure, certain that even if the heat wasn’t sufficient to destroy the Valheru artifacts, no mortal would be able to retrieve them.
A few minutes after he had done this, the mountain shook with a terrible quake, and rocks fell, killing one man, injuring another. A howling wind shot through the tunnel they were in, knocking them down and deafening them for nearly an hour afterward, and a crackle of angry energy shot along the ceiling of the tunnel, as if mad lightning were seeking a way upward, back into the sky.
Erik judged that even when they attempted to destroy those magic items, it was wise not to let them come into contact. He hoped the violence heralded the destruction of the Valheru artifacts.
Then they had been attacked, first by a ragged band of Pantathians, who appeared to have been survivors of the demon’s raid on one of the crèches, and twice they had been forced to confront the Saaur. The only reason they were alive was that those other forces were trying to get out of the mountains as desperately as Calis’s company, and didn’t pursue once combat was broken off.
But the attacks had forced them upward, higher into the mountains. Alfred came from the head of the line and said, “There’s a cave ahead.”