Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,134

bed. He put his hand under the edge of the cover, on the back of Siobhan’s knee, and ran it up slowly, feeling every inch of her curving form until he got to her neck.

Then he spread his fingers in her lustrous hair. Siobhan stirred, but did not wake.

She was so smooth, so beautiful, and so warm. Luthien couldn’t deny the half-elf’s overwhelming allure; she had captured his heart with a single glance.

Why, then, had he just been thinking of Katerin?

And why, the young man wondered as he crawled back under the covers, snuggling close to Siobhan, was he feeling so guilty?

In the days she had been in Montfort, Katerin had given no sign that she wanted to be back together with Luthien. She had not uttered a single word of disapproval about the relationship Luthien had fostered with Siobhan.

But she did disapprove, Luthien knew in his heart. He could see it in her green eyes, those beautiful orbs that had greeted him at dawn after the night he had become a man, on a hill in Dun Varna, in a world that seemed so many millions of miles and millions of years away.

It was all lace and frills, niceties and painted ladies who served the court well. The sight revealed in the crystal ball turned Brind’Amour’s stomach, but at the same time, it gave him hope. Carlisle on Stratton, in Avon far to the south of Eriador, had been built for war, and by war, centuries before, a mighty port city bristling with defenses. Greensparrow had come to the throne ruthlessly, in a bloody and bitterly fought battle, and the first years of his reign had been brutal beyond anything the Avonsea Islands had seen since the Huegoth invasions of centuries before.

But now Carlisle was lace and frills, an overabundance of sweetened candies and carnal offerings.

Brind’Amour’s magical eye wove its way through the palace. The wizard had never before been so daring, so reckless, as to send his mind’s eye so near to his archenemy. If Greensparrow detected the magical emanations . . .

The thick stone walls of Brind’Amour’s mountain hideaway would be of little defense against Greensparrow’s allies, mighty demons from the pits of hell.

The sheer bustle of the palace amazed the distant wizard. Hundreds of people filtered through every room on the lower level, all drinking, all stuffing their faces with cakes, many stealing away to whatever darkened corner they could find. Burly cyclopians lined the walls of every room. How ironic, the wizard mused; many of the one-eyes stood before tapestries that depicted ancient battles in which their ancestors were defeated by the men of Avon!

The eye moved along, the images in the crystal ball flitting past. Then Brind’Amour felt a sensation of power, a magical strength, and for a moment, he thought that Greensparrow had sensed the intruding energy and he nearly broke the connection altogether. But then the old wizard realized that this was something different, a passive energy: the strength of Greensparrow himself, perhaps.

Brind’Amour leaned back and considered that point. He recalled Luthien’s battle with the wizard Duke Morkney atop the tower of the Ministry. Morkney had called in a demon, Praehotec, and had given the beast his own body to use. In watching that battle, Brind’Amour had felt this very same sensation, only it was stronger here.

The old wizard understood, and he was filled with revulsion. With a low growl, he leaned forward, throwing all his concentration into the divining device and moving the eye along, following the beacon of Greensparrow’s energy. It sailed up the back stairs of the palace, to the second floor where there weren’t so many people, though even more one-eyed Praetorian Guards. It went down a maze of thickly carpeted hallways and came to a closed door.

Brind’Amour felt a jolt as the eye came up to that door. He tried to force it through, but found that a barrier was in place: the room had been magically sealed.

Greensparrow was behind that door. Brind’Amour knew it, but knew, too, that if he sent enough of his own energy to break through the blocking ward, the wizard-king would surely sense it.

Suddenly, the image in the crystal ball went dark as a huge cyclopian passed through the insubstantial eye. The door opened, and Brind’Amour was quick to urge his eye to follow the brute through.

The room beyond was relatively empty, considering the lavish furnishings throughout the rest of the palace. A single throne was centered in the square chamber, atop