Casket of Souls

another chair and clasped hands with him. “I didn’t know what to expect here.”
    Thero gave a rusty chuckle. “Wizards are hard to kill. How else do you think we live to be so old? I’d managed to expel most of the poison from my body by the time Micum brought me here.”
    “That nasty-looking black stuff you were coughing up?”
    Thero nodded. “Not a pleasant process, but it saved my life. Valerius has been working to restore my strength.”
    “With considerable success, I might add,” said Valerius.
    “How soon until you’re strong enough for magic? We need you to restore Illia.”
    “Fortunately, the ring of protection takes very little effort,” Thero replied. “The symbols do most of the work. I only hope we didn’t just get lucky with Mika because he’s wizard-born.”
    “Don’t say that in front of the Cavishes. They’re scared enough as it is. And this might help.” Seregil took Atre’s bone necklace from his tunic and gave it to Thero. “Brader told us Atre always used it to work his magic.”
    Thero held it gingerly between two fingers and wrinkled his nose.
    “Those are human bones,” said Valerius.
    “I thought so,” replied Seregil.
    “And strung on human skin.” Thero dropped it onto the coverlet with a look of disgust. “How this whole business didn’t reek of necromancy I can’t imagine. As for that thing—” He gestured at the necklace, clearly loath to touch it again. “It isn’t magic.”
    Seregil’s heart sank. “What? But Brader said Atre always used it!”
    “He may have, but his magic didn’t come from it. It’s a nasty relic, very old, and clearly a ritual piece, but the only power it might have had was if Atre believed it was magic. If so, it was nothing but his own superstition at work. The power lay in him.”
    “That would explain why you didn’t find it with your magic, unless he carried it with him.”
    “I suppose so.”
    Seregil let out a frustrated growl. “So it won’t help you at all?”
    “If anything, the foul aura of the thing would hinder me. From what little I felt from it, it’s been used by hundreds of evil people over a very long period of time.”
    Seregil told them what had happened to the bodies after Brader and Atre died.
    “Abominations!” the drysian rumbled. “Are the corpses still there?”
    “Yes, we locked them in.”
    “I’ll deal with them.”
    “Can you tell from the necklace where they were from, Thero?” asked Seregil.
    The wizard reluctantly rested his hand over it, eyes squeezed shut with the effort, then fell back against the pillows.
    “It’s too soon to be doing that!” Valerius scooped the necklace up and tossed it to Seregil.
    “It’s all right,” Thero gasped. “They came from somewhere far beyond the Ironheart Mountains, a land I know nothing of. And centuries ago, though I can’t tell how many in my present state.”
    “Not Zengati, after all?” asked Alec.
    “No.”
    Seregil nodded. “In that first play of his we saw, the narrator spoke of ‘eastern mountains’ and black ships. Alec noted it at the time, thinking they were talking about Mycena, which didn’t make any sense. I thought it was just poetic license at the time, but perhaps he was talking about his real homeland.”
    “I wouldn’t have guessed them to be foreign, having spoken with them.”
    “They were actors, after all, and apparently had plenty of time to learn new ways and accents as they went along. So, how long until you can help Illia?”
    “I should be strong enough by tonight.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Valerius objected.
    “We don’t know how long the elixirs last,” Seregil told him. “It’s already been four days, and for one reason or another the stricken ones we know about don’t last much longer than that. For all we know, the unfixed souls can fade.”
    “I’ll be fine,” Thero interjected. “As I said, the protection doesn’t take much strength.”
    “Will you be strong enough to do what you did with Mika?”
    “All I really did was talk to him, and calm him. I can do that, and Illia knows me. Besides, her body will be right there. She won’t have to find her way.”
    Despite the reassurances, a chill went up Seregil’s back atthe thought of opening that bottle. In his mind’s eye he could still see that fluttering gesture Atre had made.
    Sometimes they just float away …
    Valerius tended Seregil’s shoulder, packing it with a honey-and-herb poultice that relieved