The shadows were watching, waiting. They sensed the rising intensity of the game.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

I slept in a tangle of brush in a hollow. Id fled through olive groves and precariously perched hillside paddies, running out of hope, till Id stumbled onto that pocket wilderness in a ravine. I was so far gone Id just crawled in, hoping fate would be kind.

A crows call wakened me from another terrible dream. I opened my eyes. The sun reached in through the brush. It dappled me with spots of light. Id hoped nobody could see me in there but that proved a false hope.

Someone was moving around the edge of the bushes. I glimpsed one, then another. Damn! The Shadowmasters men. They moved back a little and whispered.

I saw them for just a moment but they seemed troubled, less like hunters than the hunted. Curious.

Theyd spotted me, I knew. Otherwise they wouldnt be back there behind me, murmuring too low for me to catch what they said.

I couldnt turn toward them without showing them I knew they were there. I didnt want to startle them. They might do something Id regret. The crow called again. I started turning my head slowly.

I froze.

There was another player here, a dirty little brown man in a filthy loincloth and tattered turban. He squatted behind the brush. He looked like one of the slaves Croaker had freed after our victory at Ghoja. Did the soldiers know he was there?

Did it matter? He wasnt likely to be any help.

I was lying on my right side, on my arm. My fingers tingled. My arm was asleep but the sensation reminded me that my talent had shown signs of freshening since wed come down past the waist of the world. I hadnt had a chance to test it for weeks.

I had to do something. Or they would. My sword lay inches from my hand....

Golden Hammer.

It was a childs spell, an exercise, not a weapon at all, just as a butcher knife isnt. Once it would have been no more work than dropping a rock. Now it was as hard as plain speech for a stroke victim. I tried shaping the spell in my mind. The frustration! The screaming frustration of knowing what to do and being unable to do it.

But it clicked. Almost the way it had back when. Amazed, pleased, I whispered the words of power, moved my fingers. The muscles remembered!

The Golden Hammer formed in my left hand.

I jumped up, flipped it, raised my sword. The glowing hammer flew true. The soldier made a stabbed-pig sound and tried to fend it off. It branded its shape on his chest.

It was an ecstatic moment. Success with that silly childs spell was a major triumph over my handicap.