Legend of the Sorcerer Read online

  Praise for

  THE LEGEND MacKINNON

  by Donna Kauffman:

  “Adventure, passion, magic and betrayal are the bright threads Donna Kauffman weaves together to create the legend of three bold warriors out of their time.”

  —Nora Roberts

  “The characters are captivating, and the love scenes are blistering.… [The] balance between tears and laughter … makes The Legend MacKinnon a truly wonderful read. Enchanting! Donna Kauffman’s fantastic!”

  —The Literary Times

  “With this captivating story, author Donna Kauffman serves up triple the paranormal fun in a marvelous new novel.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Intricately woven together with the six main characters each having a different set of problems to unravel. This one kept me spellbound. A terrific read.”

  —Rendezvous

  “Get ready for some sensuous love stories that will heat up the atmosphere wherever you are and some laughs to tickle your fancy. The Legend MacKinnon is pure magic!”

  —Belles & Beaux of Romance Newsletter

  “Hard-edged heroes possessing smoldering sensuality are fast making Donna Kauffman a name to watch for.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Donna Kauffman is brilliant. She … delivers a captivating love story you’ll want to read over and over again.”

  —Booklovers

  “[Donna Kauffman’s] strong plots are rivaled only by her strong and passionate characters. Readers are quickly brought into her stories and are held there captivated until the final pages.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Enticing and snapping with sexual tension, not to mention a plot pulsing with sinister overtones, Bayou Heat will definitely heat the blood. Ms. Kauffman gives her readers a hot, fiery tale of pure excitement.”

  —Rendezvous on Bayou Heat

  “Donna Kauffman captures the reader on the first page and holds on tight until the book’s end. Her descriptions propel the characters off the page to emotionally dramatize this story of mystery, adventure and romance.”

  —Gothic Journal on Surrender the Dark

  LEGEND OF THE SORCERER

  A Bantam Book / March 2000

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2000 by Donna Kauffman

  Cover art copyright © 2000 by Alan Ayers

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80770-0

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  About the Author

  ONE

  Jordy Decker stopped for her third Coke in less than two hours. She knew she had a problem, and it wasn’t unquenchable thirst.

  She looked at Fred, her goldfish, floating upside down in his Tupperware container, on the seat next to her.

  “This has turned into the rest stop tour of Florida. And we have four states to go.”

  Fred swished his deformed tail around the bowl before resuming his belly-up pose.

  “Yeah, well, we all can’t float through life.” She jammed the soda can in the drink holder. “I don’t want to go home. There. I’ve said it. Are you happy now?”

  Fred floated, wisely noncommittal.

  Home. Warburg, Virginia. Only it didn’t feel like home anymore. It had taken two long years to win the court battle against Suzanne. By the time her former business partner was convicted of embezzlement, she was so exhausted that it had been little more than a moral victory for Jordy. She wasn’t even angry anymore, she was just numb.

  Fighting the battle had cost her everything: her home was gone, her business dismantled, and her former clients didn’t trust her, since Suzanne cleverly portrayed herself as the victim. So well, in fact, that her conviction hadn’t seemed to change their minds.

  But the most devastating consequence by far was that Jordy lost the ability to create the whimsical sculptures that had been her joy in life and her livelihood for the last ten years.

  Ten days of lying under the hot Florida Keys sun had given her a great tan, but no answers. It was useless to keep blaming Suzanne for all her misfortunes. If Jordy was feeling unfairly punished, well, she had to let go of that anger and just deal with it. It was over. Done.

  She was finally free to get on with her life. Whatever the hell that was going to be.

  She pictured herself driving past her old studio, through the neighborhoods of friends who had become clients, and clients who had become friends. She’d drive by the house she’d loved, then walk into the cramped apartment she hated. But it was all she could afford now.

  Yes, Suzanne owed her a huge chunk of money from the civil suit, but that was on appeal. Everything her former partner owned was being liquidated, but those proceeds would go to pay off Jordy’s legal team. A relief for sure, but she was left to rebuild her business from the ground up. And in order to do that, she had to have a product to sell.

  Taking a long sip of her soda, she pulled out the stack of photo envelopes she’d picked up on her way off Mangrove Key. She’d decided to do some painting, watercolors perhaps, as a roundabout way of getting back to sculpting. Something completely different to get the creativity flowing again. She’d taken photos of sunrises, sunsets, palm trees, and mangroves as inspiration.

  Forcing enthusiasm, she flipped open the first envelope. Where could she set up an easel in her one-bedroom apartment to catch the best light? She snorted. That was a joke. There was no “best” light. There was no “good” light. Her double-paned windows were perpetually clouded because the seals were broken. She sighed, glanced down … and let out a little scream.

  Revulsion curled inside her stomach. “Jesus, what in the hell happened to you?”
/>   The stranger in the photo stared silently at her, her face badly beaten.

  Who had taken these pictures?

  The abuser? Was that twisted or what? And to have them developed at a one-hour photo shop? She slid one picture behind the rest, then another. Maybe this woman was trying to do something about the abuse she’d suffered. Maybe she’d had these pictures taken as proof. Why hadn’t she gone to the police? Or the hospital? Or maybe she couldn’t trust anyone.

  Jordy scowled. She knew something about having nowhere to turn. Her gaze was riveted to the tragic, mutilated face. Who was this woman? Had she once been pretty? Her medium-length dark hair was wet, or very dirty, matted as it was to her head. The one eye that wasn’t swollen shut continued to stare at her, silently demanding that something be done about this.

  Compared to what this woman had been through, Jordy’s troubles suddenly seemed trivial.

  She could mail them back to the photo shop and hope things would get straightened out. She looked back down at the photos and found herself shaking her head.

  Maybe it was because too many people had bailed out on her when she’d counted on them most, but she couldn’t just dump these in an envelope and forget about them. Or maybe she was just delaying the inevitable return to Warburg. The return to uncertainty.

  She tried to tell herself it was righteousness, not cowardice, that had her turning for the exit going south. She knew it was a little of both.

  • • •

  It was dusk when she returned to the Lower Keys. There was a different clerk behind the counter than before, when she finally walked into the ZippySnap. The young woman had unnaturally black hair, which matched her fingernail polish and her lipstick.

  “I got these by mistake.” Jordy laid the envelope on the counter. “I picked up five envelopes earlier today. Four of them were my pictures. The other one had my name on it, but the pictures aren’t mine.”

  “Did you check the negatives?” she asked, clearly annoyed. The girl only needed a nail file to complete the picture of occupational boredom.

  “No negatives in that envelope.”

  “Can’t help you then.”

  “Where is the young man who helped me earlier today?”

  “Jason’s gone for good. Parents are making him go back to school.” She rolled her eyes, as if Jordy would certainly sympathize with that indignity.

  “Okay, then may I see your manager?”

  “Sherrill went off with Jason for the rest of the weekend. Sick if you ask me. I mean, she’s almost thirty.”

  Jordy was thirty-one. “Yeah, a real Methuselah complex. About the pictures I got by mistake—”

  “Just leave ’em. Probably belong to tourists. Most don’t come back, but some call.”

  Jordy tried a different tack. “Did you deliver any pictures today to someone who looked like they’d been in a fight? A woman?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  Just how many black and blue customers do you get? Jordy wanted to ask. “Do you have a policy on pictures that might be, you know, a little out of the norm?”

  The clerk frowned suspiciously. “We just print them. If it’s about kids or something, we call the cops, but otherwise Sherrill just tells us to shut up and deliver them. Listen, it’s time for me to close up. Do you want a refund or a free roll of film?”

  “I want you to check the pictures you have here and see if any of them are mine.”

  Elvira’s heavily lined eyes widened. “But that would take, like, forever.”

  “They might still be here in someone else’s envelope. I’m in one shot, so you’ll know if you see them.”

  The clerk slid off her stool and did a half-hearted scan. “Must have been picked up.”

  Jordy didn’t want to just leave the photos, but with her pictures already gone, an easy switch was no longer an option. “I’ll be here through tomorrow.” She wrote her name and hotel on a blank film envelope. “Call me immediately if they come back in.”

  She left the store feeling defeated. She glanced through the glass storefront as she kicked her car into gear and jammed it immediately back into park. Elvira had just tossed what looked like her envelope of photos into the trash.

  Jordy strode back in. “What did you just throw away?”

  The girl looked taken aback. “There were no negatives. They’re probably with the other pictures.” She shrugged. “They’ll just get a new set made.”

  Jordy hated to admit she had a point, but she wasn’t going to pin her hopes on that. She stepped around the end of the counter and fished them out of the trash. “If she comes back with my pictures and wants these, give her my name and the name of my hotel.” She glared at the clerk. “I’ll make sure she gets them.”

  TWO

  Malacai L’Baan answered his fan mail. Grudgingly.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the readers who enjoyed his work and took the time to write to him. He loved reading his mail. But couldn’t they just be happy reading, or even criticizing, his books? Why the fascination with him personally? He had to be the most boring guy on the planet. He spent most of his time living inside his head, creating his otherworldly stories, and the rest of his time dealing with Alfred.

  Responding to fans was an arduous task. He never knew what to say and some of his readers’ letters were amazingly … graphic. Then again, not responding at all was out of the question.

  Alfred, as he so often reminded him, had answered every fan letter he’d ever received, in his own hand. And as the legend he’d become, those letters had been innumerable. His grandson would do no less, even if his handwriting was so much worse.

  E-mail had made part of the task easier. Alfred grumbled about the impersonality of it, but as far as Cai was concerned, it was a Very Good Thing. Or it usually was.

  Cai frowned as the row of incoming mail scrolled onto his screen. The name was there again.

  Margaron. Cai well remembered the spell it had triggered when Alfred had seen the last note. When Alfred went into full rant mode, even Cai couldn’t understand the old Welshman’s language, but Cai managed to piece together that Margaron was a Welsh name meaning pearl.

  He noted the rest of the e-mail address. It was a different provider, but, like the others, it had originated somewhere in the UK. He had fans all over the world, so the location wasn’t unusual. It was the tone of the notes that bothered him.

  Both of Margaron’s previous notes had referenced his new fantasy series, The Quest for the Dark Pearl. Part One had been on sale for a little over a week when the first note arrived. He’d responded with the standard thank-you e-mail he used when he deemed the correspondent to be a bit over the edge. Polite, but not inviting further conversation.

  The second note had been terse, more emotional, not exactly threatening, but definitely out there. He’d opted to not respond at all, hoping she’d go on to other pursuits. She had rambled on about how the release of Dark Pearl had finally proven to her that he was the man meant to guide her future, and that together they were destined for immortal greatness. That had been unnerving, to say the least. But this time she’d gone much farther—and in a very different way.

  He read, Did you pick up the pictures as I instructed? She was quite lovely. Such a pity you didn’t respond to my last missive. Perhaps you need the challenge of a good deed, a soul rescued. Yes, I see now that I was wrong in underestimating you.

  I have her here. She loves your work, but she’s far from alone, isn’t she? Ah, they fantasize about the man who writes of such a powerful and seductive sorcerer. But she sees only the fantasy you created. I understand the reality. You are the sorcerer. I have always known this, I alone believed. I have been waiting for your sign and you have finally given it to me.

  Bring me the Dark Pearl, Malacai L’Baan. Surely you don’t want her to suffer for her foolish mortal emotions. Bring me the Dark Pearl and she will be set free. And we will begin our future as ordained.

  Had some deranged sou
l out there actually kidnapped one of his readers? It seemed too ludicrous to even consider. He’d never received any pictures. What was she talking about? He scanned the last two notes she’d sent. Neither spoke of pictures or said anything about abducting anyone. He closed the file and leaned back in his chair with a deep, aggravated sigh.

  The Dark Pearl series had been inspired by some vaguely remembered stories Alfred had told him as a child. Cai’s version was entirely fictional, a fantasy involving a magical dark pearl that his sorcerer hero had already spent some eight hundred pages searching for, and wouldn’t find until at least book four, if Cai stuck to his outline.

  Alfred chose that moment to burst into the office.

  “Dilys is heading over to Mangrove to do the marketing. Are you in need of anything?”

  Yeah, an e-mail filter, he thought. Cai was careful not to look at his monitor. Alfred might be in his eighties and missing more than a few pages from his mental encyclopedia, but at times he was very well indexed. Always, it seemed, when Cai didn’t want him to be. “Can’t think of anything.”

  His grandfather filled the doorway, though his demanding presence was more charisma than physical mass. He was tall, though less so over the past years. He depended more and more on his cane, but his wiry frame and squared, knobby shoulders kept his bearing erect, and there was an odd grace to his stilted gait. His hair was pure white and fell to his shoulders in a silvery mane. His goatee and mustache created the look of an Old World scholar and storyteller. Alfred was both.

  His color was good today, Cai noted, not as flushed as it had been yesterday. And he hadn’t garroted himself shaving. Always a blessing. Cai and Alfred had a longstanding disagreement over the latter’s use of a straight razor. It was a battle that, as of yet, Cai hadn’t managed to win. A neck undotted with bandages and Kleenex blots was a good sign, but it was the eyes that were the true gauge. They were as clear a turquoise blue as the water that surrounded their home on Crystal Key.

  He’d have to be on his toes. No way was Alfred seeing the e-mail. Not after what had happened last time.