Free Death of a Darklord by Laurell K. Hamilton

light and shadows trembled around her like struck gold. It was as if the light drew a shaking breath and bent toward her palm. It folded downward into the skin of her hand like water going down a drain. The light leaked away into her skin. It sucked downward into that cold, iciness, and the cavern filled with life, warmth, and the ice sucked it down greedily.
    The lantern went out in a sputtering rush of sparks. They were left in darkness. The only light was the cold gleam of stars. But, strangely, that was enough. Everything seemed to flicker and glow with a faint edge of silver light.
    “Look at the body, Elaine.”
    She did.
    The man lay on the frozen ground. His face was no longer ordinary. There was some spark left, not of life, but of what he had been. He had been a man who laughed often and was often afraid. What need had driven him out in the darkest part of the year? The question gave the answer—love. He loved his remaining family, his people, his village. She saw the recent loss of his daughter like a shadow across his still face.
    How did she know all this? How could she be so certain?
    “Do not question yourself, Elaine. You will spoil it if you do.”
    She tried not to, but it was hard. Hard to stand there and stare at the flickering light that traced the corpse and gave up all the man’s secrets. She knew him in that instant as no one else had, not even his family, perhaps not even himself. She saw him stripped and pure before her, faults bare to her magic, but strengths there, too. His bravery, his kindness, his fear. Over all was fear. He had traveled far to die in such terror.
    It was not fair. Fairness is for children and fools. That soft, sure voice was in her head, Gersalius’s voice inside her head.
    The flickering light on the body was the reflected gleam of Pegin Tallyrand’s life. A good life, well loved, generous with what little he had. He would be missed by many. The light shuddered, stumbling as if it had feet to be tripped. The light circled round a small lump in the man’s cloak. It was not a pocket, but something affixed to the lining, sewn in.
    Elaine half-fell to her knees, hand reaching for that stumbling light. Her fingertips hesitated, hovering just over the cloth. There was a flash so bright it dazzled the eyes. A smell of burned cloth, and Elaine held a small piece of carved bone in her hand.
    It was the finger joint of a human hand, carved and painted with runes she did not know. The light was gone. Everything was gone. She knelt on the frozen ground with the bone on the palm of her hand. The bone gleamed like a ghost in the dark. The silver glow was gone, and the starlight too faint to see by.
    Gersalius leaned forward, peering at her hand. His eyes glowed in the dark. Tiny pinpricks of flame burned in his face, green to her violet, but it was the same kind of magic. Had her own eyes glowed just moments before? Elaine glanced up at Tereza. She stood silent and unreadable in the dark. Elaine did not ask if her eyes had glowed with violet flames; she was not ready to hear if the answer were yes.
    “Very interesting,” Gersalius said.
    “What is it?”
    “What did your magic tell you?”
    “It wasn’t part of the man. He didn’t know he carried it.”
    “Very good, what else?”
    She thought it would be hard to recall what the light had shown, now that the light was gone, but it wasn’t. It was easy, as if each moment were carved behind her eyelids where she could never forget it.
    “It was a spell. A piece of death sewn into his cloak. It was dormant, waiting, until he touched the great tree.”
    “Why did the tree set the spell off?”
    She thought about that for a moment, rolling it round in the remembered light. “Its power was death. It had to wait for something dead to come along.”
    “And the great tree was dead, killed by lightning.”
    “Yes,” she said softly.
    “Would a dead body have triggered the spell?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “The spell animated