Stormrider by David Gemmell Page B

and out. Some she could see, some lines she could follow, but the whole was a mystery. In her spirit dreams she could see fragments. A hawk-faced Varlish lord—similar to the Moidart—and a skull within an ancient case that burned with unholy light. Battles and deaths, some past and some still to come, raged in her visions.
    All she knew with grim certainty was that the Stormrider was central to the survival of the Rigante and that the Rigante were vital to the survival of not only the world she knew but the well-being of the world to come. Her eyes felt heavy with weariness, and she pushed herself to her feet and once more ventured out into the night.
    The Wyrd walked back through the trees to the remains of the old stone circle at the center of the island. Only one golden column stood upright now, and it was cracked, the ancient runes worn away by wind and rain. The Wyrd shivered and drew her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. The night wind whispered across the icy lake.
    “Soon, witch,”
came a voice in her mind.
“Soon your evil will be forever destroyed.”
    The Wyrd took a deep, calming breath and whispered the words of power. A bright light blazed, and the world shifted beneath her feet. She stumbled and fell to the earth of the Wishing Tree woods, hundreds of miles south of Sorrow Bird Lake. The Redeemers would find her soon. They knew almost all her tricks now.
    Rising, she looked around at the ancient trees. “I need you, Riamfada,” she said aloud, her voice breaking. “Help me!”
    A glowing light formed like a tiny candle flame flickering a few feet above the snow-covered earth. Slowly it swelled into a shimmering globe like moonlit mist trapped in glass.
    “What is troubling you, child?” asked the voice from the light.
    “It is long since I was a child, Riamfada. Look at me. I am an old woman. My bones hurt, and I can no longer—without a little magic—thread a needle.” The Wyrd sighed. “It is forty years since first you took me into the Wishing Tree woods. Long years.”
    “And
that
is what is troubling you?”
    “No.” The Wyrd gazed at the globe of light floating some three feet away from her. For a moment her mind drifted away from her problems. “Why do you not take human form these days?”
    “This is what I am, child. I only take human form when I need to speak to humans who cannot understand my nature. It is tiring to do so, drawing particles from the air and shaping them like a sculptor. This is more comfortable for me. This is how I am when I am with friends. What is it that you fear to say to me?”
    “I am frightened, Riamfada.”
    “Of the demons hunting you?”
    “They are not demons—or spirits like you,” she said. “They are living men who have found a way to soar free from the flesh. They whisper to me of their hatred, and they seek to kill me when I am in spirit form. Thus far I have escaped them, but they are growing in strength and . . . “ Her words trailed away.
    “You wish to fight them, Caretha? To kill them?”
    “Would it be so wrong?”
    “A simple question but one of rare complexity. Your gift is to heal, Caretha, to enhance the fading magic of the world. When healers yearn to kill, then hope begins to die.”
    “Then I must let them
kill
me?”
    “Better that than to become like them.
That
is the real danger, Caretha. Evil cannot be overcome by evil. The Seidh—at the last—understood that.”
    “Why did they leave us?” said the Wyrd. “They could have helped us, guided us. Then there would have been no wars, no plagues, no disease.”
    “Once they, too, believed that,” said Riamfada. “For thousands of years they tried. They saw man relentlessly devouring the magic, sowing the seeds that would inevitably lead to destruction and an end to all life. And slowly it dawned upon some of them that they, too, were parasites. The Seidh also fed on the magic and were part of the cycle of destruction. Then the Seidh, too, went to war,