Spirit Stone

 

The wizard Elzalore opened his lamp, pulled out the sputtering, feeble remnants of the tallow candle, and used it to light the last candle in his haversack.

The tunnels under the Queen's castle were rumored to be so vast that entire squads of soldiers and miners (and doubtless hundreds of treasure-seekers) had vanished over the years. He believed the stories now after spending two days in the chill damp, sleeping on stones in the utter silence.

But Elzalore had a map. The old herb lady at the edge of the moors had said it was a true map from her grandfather. Her grandfather had helped build a new tower on the castle as a young man a hundred years earlier.

Elzalore had paid her ten gold for it, a princely sum he hoped to recoup with a single discovery. For, in addition to the map, he had a scroll that pulled him toward his destination.

Soon, he hoped, he would find old Skandarnish's dusty bones and the jewel he had carried when alive. The jewel was reward enough, but the magical power it was said to hold was the true payoff. Even now, the power called to him, called to the scroll, pleading for rescue.

Some said it had fallen from the sky, trapped inside a burning rock. Some said it was found inside the gizzard of a black dragon.

The scroll said nothing about this. It only said the jewel had a name: Vecnan. It also said the jewel had much "onabnon." It was an ancient Elevenari word meaning "power." But, more alluring, it also meant "spirit."

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