Taker Of Skulls(12)

Sasha’s eyes widened. If anything, the fact that Karnea so calmly admitted what she was had dismayed the prospector even more. “Aren’t you worried about the Shadow?” she asked.

Karnea took off her glasses and studied them for a moment. It was as if she was looking at her reflection in them. “All with the Gift must worry about such corruption but I can assure you I am well warded against such things as it’s possible to be.”

Sasha fell silent. Kormak imagined she was stunned by this calm discussion of the risks of losing your soul by another woman, particularly one as harmless looking as Karnea. He was not fooled. He knew there was no such thing as a harmless magician.

Karnea did not seem to notice Sasha’s appalled look. “And you can be touched by the Light as well as the Shadow,” she said. “Scripture says so.”

“Do you think you are? Touched by the Light, I mean,” said Sasha once she had regained composure enough to speak.

“I have touched its presence once or twice,” she said. “I am not sure the Light has touched me. I like to think that it might some time. It would be a blessing indeed.”

“I thought the Light only touched saints,” Sasha said.

“You think me egotistical?” Karnea asked. Her tone was very mild but Sasha responded in a way that she never would have to a threatening word from Kormak.

“No. I was just saying.” She spoke nervously.

“Perhaps I am egotistical,” said Karnea. She smiled benevolently around her. Kormak was reminded of an owl. They looked wise and splendid but they were also deadly predators. Karnea took a mouthful of her stew, made a face, and then blew on the spoon to cool it. She looked about as threatening as a rabbit, but Sasha has moved to put some distance between them. “No one really knows why the Light touches some and not others. Although some scholars claim that in every case of sainthood the one so blessed had the Gift.”

“You mean they were sorcerers? You are saying that the saints were all magicians. That is blasphemy.” Sasha sounded genuinely appalled. She looked at Kormak and Boreas for support.

“Some of the Old Ones have told me similar things,” said Kormak maliciously.

“Really,” said Karnea. “Fascinating. We have much to talk about, Sir Kormak.

“The Old Ones are notorious liars,” he said to close off any further inquiries of this sort.

“Not all of them,” said Karnea. “And even in the lies of the most deceitful some nuggets of truth may be uncovered. It makes the lie more convincing, or so they say, although I confess this is not really my area of expertise.”

“What is?” Kormak asked. In his experience a scholar could usually be distracted by asking them about their specialist subjects. They loved to talk about them even more than they loved to ask questions.

“Initially I thought it was the Healing Arts,” Karnea said, “but after a few decades I found myself drawn to the rune lore of the Khazduri. I spent some time underground in Aethelas talking with them, learning their tongue and about their ways. I am composing a monograph on the subject which I hope to have finished within the decade.”

“This is why you were in Aethelas when I was a youth,” Kormak said. It was odd to think that the dwarves had chosen to allow this woman to stay with them. Most members of the order spent only a few nights underground as part of their initiation and the dwarves mostly just ignored them.

“And what about you?” Sasha asked Boreas.

“I was a soldier,” Boreas said. “And now I am a bodyguard.”

He showed his skeletal smile. “The work is safer and the pay is better. The food, too.”

“Where did you find the rune?” Karnea asked Sasha. The suddenness to the question reminded Kormak of an owl dropping on a mouse.

Sasha said, “In the Forge Quarter about a year ago. It was before the goblins and the monsters were quite so thick on the ground down there.”

“Monsters?” Boreas said.

“Huge, twisted mutated things. In the first couple of years after the city was discovered there was nothing like them, then the new goblin king showed up and the tribes began to in-gather and the wolves came and the bats.”

“Oh dear,” said Karnea.

“You see why you were brought along, Sir Kormak,” Boreas said.

“The goblins have been getting meaner and meaner ever since old Graghur showed up. Been raiding prospector camps. Just a few on outlying tents but they never used to do that.”

“Graghur?” Kormak said. His tone was sharp.

“That’s what he’s called. Why are you so interested?”

Kormak thought of the long lists he had memorised when he was a novice back on Mount Aethelas. “It is the name of an Old One,” he said. “He hasn’t been heard off since the Selenean Resurgence though.”