The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within by J. L. Doty Page A

understood what was required of them. In silence they helped her out of her wet clothing, wrapped her in a dry nightgown and put her to bed. But she was barely conscious of these things, for all of her power was devoted to the sword, to holding it at bay during the first critical hours of Morgin’s escape so he could concentrate on the world about him.
    She shut out the world around her, thought only of Morgin and the blade, placed her own magic between his power and that of the sword, and let the hours pass without rest or comfort. She had never done anything so terrifying, for as she penetrated deeper into the depths of the talisman’s magic, a malign intelligence hovered there, an unwholesome consciousness that, until then, had been aware only of Morgin. But now, with her interference, it had grown aware of her, and never again would she be able to lower her defenses fully and rest with ease.

Chapter 5: To Sense the Sword
    Morddon brought Mortiss to a sudden halt and eyed the trail suspiciously. All about him the soft roar of a slow drizzling rain spattered on the leaves of the forest. It made him uneasy to have his sense of hearing so encumbered when on the trail of his enemy, not to mention the discomfort of the damp cold that penetrated to his soul. For the hundredth time he looked at the sky, but blanketed by low, gray clouds it gave no hope the rain would end soon.
    He climbed wearily out of Mortiss’ saddle, squatted in the middle of the trail and stared for a long time at the hoof prints of what was undeniably a group of seven Kulls. Without Morgin’s memories to guide him, Morddon would not have known what a Kull was, for they were foreign to this time and this dream.
    The spoor was fresh, not more than a few hours old, the signs were there for even the most inexperienced tracker to read: seven Kulls; not six, not eight, but exactly seven. And yet only that morning he had been following just three. Something strange was going on; of that he had no doubt.
    He got back into the saddle and started up the trail again, moving with even more caution than before. He was well behind his own lines, and time and again he thought there should not be groups of Kulls roving about here. Possibly his enemy might begin using Kulls at this time, and a small number of halfmen might become separated from their main column, and through the fortunes of war even find themselves behind the lines of their enemy. But this was the second such group Morddon had come across, and like the first, after tracking it for some time, it had met and joined forces with another such group. He continued tracking them in the constant, steady drizzle of the rain-soaked forest.
    Morddon had been scouting the Goath hordes for Metadan for more than a month, and during that time Metadan’s forces had met the enemy in full-scale engagements twice, and both times they had been victorious, though not without losses of their own. Morddon knew that he—and the intelligence he’d gathered—had been partly responsible for those victories, and that gave him almost as much satisfaction as doing the killing himself, though he’d managed to do his own share of killing on his scouting expeditions. Then six days ago the clouds set in and the rain began; it had stopped only occasionally during that time, poured heavily for brief periods too, but mostly it just rained a constant, steady drizzle, without wind or thunder or lightning.
    The weather ended any plans for real battles, so he decided to come in and get a well-deserved hot meal since he’d been out on the trail for more than twelve days. But on his way in, after crossing into what was friendly territory, he’d come across the trail of that first group of Kulls: two of them. He followed them, and the next day they joined up with four more that had come from a different direction, and that night he killed them all in their sleep.
    It had bothered him at the time; two separate groups of Kulls well behind