Blood of the Fold

Richard paced back and forth, pulling on his hair, frantically trying to think of what to do. The tingle of a presence flushed across his flesh. He halted his pacing and looked up to see a mriswith standing near the door.

"The queen needs you, skin brother. You must help her. Call the sliph."

He rushed over to the dark, scaled creature. "I know she needs me! How do I call the sliph!"

The slit of a mouth spread in what^ looked to be a smile. "You are the first to be born in three thousand years with the power to wake her. You have already broken the shield keeping us from her. You must use your power. Call the sliph with your gift."

"My gift?"

The mriswith nodded, its beady eyes staying on Richard. "Call her with your gift."

Richard finally turned away from the mriswith and went back to the stone wall around the great pit. He tried to remember how he had used his gift in the past. It always came on instinct. Nathan had said that that was the way it worked with him, with a war wizard: need — through instinct.

He had to let his need bring forth the gift.

Richard let the need burn through him, through the calm center. He didn't try to summon the power, but he screamed with the need of it.

He thrust his fists into the air, tilting his head back. He let the need fill him. He wanted nothing else. He let the unconscious restraints go. He didn't try to think of what to do, he simply demanded it be done.

He needed the sliph.

He let out a silent cry of fury.

Come to me!

He loosed the power, like letting out a deep breath, demanding the task be done.

Light ignited between his fists. That was it — the call — he knew it, he felt it, he understood it. He knew, too, what to do. The softly glowing mass rotated between his wrists as lacy veins of light twisted up his arms, flowing into the pulsing force between.

When he felt the power reach its peak, he cast his hands downward. With a howl, the orb of light shot away, down into the blackness.

As it descended, its light illuminated the stone in a ring around it. The ring of light and the glowing mass became smaller and smaller, the howl diminishing in the far distance, until he could neither hear nor see what he had unleashed.

Richard hung over the stone wall, looking into the bottomless abyss, but all was silent and dark. He could hear only his own panting. He stood and glanced over his shoulder. The mriswith watched, but made no move to help; what was needed was up to Richard. He hoped it would be enough.

In the stillness of the Keep, in the quiet of the mountain of dead stone towering around him, there came a distant rumbling.

A rumbling of life.

Richard leaned back over the wall, looking down, but saw nothing. Yet, he could feel something. The stone beneath his feet quaked. Stone dust floated in the jittering air.

Richard looked down in the well again and saw a reflection. The well was filling — not filling as water fills, but something was racing up the shaft with impossible speed, roaring with a howling shriek of velocity as it came. The howl grew as the thing rushed upward.

Richard flung himself back from the stone wall, scarcely fast enough. He was sure it would shoot out of the well and blast through the ceiling. Nothing moving that fast could stop in time. Yet it did.

All was abruptly still. Richard sat up, propping himself up with his arms behind on the floor.

A lustrous metallic hump slowly mounded above the edge of the stone wall surrounding the well. It drew up into a bulk, rising impossibly of its own accord, like water standing in the air, only it wasn't water. Its glossy surface reflected everything about it, like polished armor, distorting the images reflected off its surface as it grew and moved.

It looked like living quicksilver.

The lump, joined to the body of it in the well as if by a neck, continued to contort, bending into edges and planes, folds and curves. It warped into a woman's face. Richard had to remind himself to take a breath. He now understood why Kolo called the sliph "she."

The face finally saw him on the floor. It looked like a smooth statue made of silver — except it moved.

"Master," she said in an eerie voice that echoed around the room. Her lips hadn't moved as she spoke, but she smiled as if well pleased. The silver face warped into curiosity. "You have called me? You wish to travel?"

Richard sprang to his feet. "Yes. Travel. I wish to travel."

The pleasant smile returned. "Come, then. We will travel."

Richard brushed the stone dust from his hands onto his shirt. "How? How do we… travel?"

The silver brow drew together. "You have not traveled before?"

Richard shook his head. "No. But I need to now. I need to get to the Old World."

"Ah. I have been there often. Come, and we will travel."

Richard hesitated. "What do I do? What do you want me to do?"

A hand formed up and touched the top of the wall. "Come to me," the voice said, echoing around the room. "I will take you."

"How long does it take?"