The Seventh Bell

"The Master brought you to his bedroom again last night," he commented angrily to Kyrinne. She looked up from her spellbook and stared at him with ice blue eyes.

"I know that." The dark-haired youth she spoke to was visibly straining to keep himself under control. She rolled her eyes at him and deliberately turned her back to the passionate apprentice. "There’s nothing you can do against him, so forget it. Forget me."

The words seemed to reach him from a long way off as his smoldering gaze targeted the figure of the necromancer in his tower, and he made no reply for some minutes. Then, impulsively, he reached out and grabbed her shoulders, spinning her around to face him.

"Don’t!" she cried out, but her warning came too late.

He gave a piercing cry and released her, falling back onto the hard dirt groung and gaping at his hands, which now crawled with crimson burns as if he had thrust them into a metalsmith’s forge-fire.

"He spelled you against me!"

"Yes," she commented, feeling slightly sorry for him.

"That -" he broke off, seeing the look on her face. "You love him." It was a statement, not a question, and the youth hung his head in shame.

"Antarn," she replied softly, "I do not love. Not him, not you, nor anyone else. I cannot. The Master once told me my heart is made of ice. Perhaps it is. I care nothing for anyone, not even you. Certainly not for him."

The Master... Myk... Antarn almost growled at the name. How many times over the years had the Master baited him and Kyrinne? He would assign them to work closely together for hours on end, make certain that they were left alone long enough for Antarn to make an advance, and then suddenly appear to punish him. Once, the youth had grabbed Kyrinne’s hand and kissed it, whereupon a wreath of needles sprouted around his mouth, making every utterance painful. The needles had disappeared after two days, but during that time he could not speak, eat, or even drink. Myk had spent years teaching Antarn how to mindspeak to Kyrinne, then one day put a fiery barrier around Kyrinne’s mind that caused Antarn’s eyes to bleed when he tried to break it. The heartless necromancer would set his apprentices to spells where physical contact was necessary in order to draw on one another’s power, toying with their young emotions. In every way, Antarn felt he deserved Kyrinne’s affections, and yet she remained the property of their Master. And the boy knew better than to challenge Myk.

Antarn’s eyes rippled with countless emotions, but he said nothing of them, forcing himself to swallow his anger. Instead, he brought up the subject which he had come to see her about, ignoring his throbbing palms.

"I’m leaving, Kyrinne. Today. Right now, as a matter of fact."

"Leaving?" she looked at him curiously. An apprentice does not simply leave his master.

"No, not by choice," he smiled at the interest which was evident in her gaze. "On a mission, a quest if you will. I am sent to find that which will end this war, the thing of legends which has the power to defeat twenty sorcerers like Tarin Blei."

Kyrinne frowned at him. "Nothing has that much magic. Only..." Her eyes widened as he nodded. "The Master sends you for the Seventh Bell? He’s mad! The most recent account of it was written well over two hundred years ago, and that by a simple half-dwarf who knew nothing of necromancy. Since then no one’s heard anything about it. It was probably destroyed long ago, and even if it still exists somewhere I’m certain you stand no chance of finding it."