"One last time, Indria, I am a patient man. I have given you ample time to tell us where you have hidden the Blue Audicil." Gerfolan did not look sinister in any physical way, but Indria knew that he was resolute. His pale blue eyes were as cold as glass in whiten.

"These manacles tell me that you are far from patient, Gerfolan." She raised her wrists as an additional accusation. "Bristan’s guards seized me from my bed and chained me here, and you have withheld even a crust of bread. Am I likely to divulge the whereabouts of the one ruling Audicil to the miscreants who stole the other two? I paid you a higher compliment than you pay me, Gerfolan, I never thought you were stupid."

Gerfolan flushed an unbecoming red. "Flog her," he spat, "perhaps she will not be so witty the next time I ask her for the Audicil. Flog her then chain her to the boat ring."

"But the t-t-t-tide, your worship," stuttered his lackey, "it will rise and kill her."

"If I’m dead, Gerfolan, you will never find the Audicil." It occurred to her that he might in his anger kill her before she could do what she intended to save the Blue Audicil. The Audicil in question hummed comfort in her ear.

"Do not try me too far, Indria. The other two Audicils will eventually find the one. Bristan and I search for it each day. I might have spared you this indignity had you surrendered with good grace and relinquished the Blue Audicil."

"You are a fool! Either way I will die, for you do not understand the power of the Audicils. To you they are a means of satisfying your perfidious desires. They are more than ovoid playthings with dancing rings of fire for your amusement. In them resides more power than you have the ability to wield. Bidding them become smaller or larger, having them seek, and do your bidding is the least of their mastery The lifeblood of Acarfola resides in them."

"You have said all this before. It changes nothing."

"Do you not understand? You will destroy everything you seek to conquer , including yourselves. Only one can wield the Audicils, one who has been appointed by the Guardians."

"So you told Bristan, but I believe it no more than he." Raising his fist he beat it into his other hand in a gesture of contempt. "It is a lie disclosed by you in this final hour to keep the power for yourself. I weary of your stratagems, Indria. You have lost the Audicils, accept it." Gerfolan walked to the steps that led up and out of the grotto. He turned for one last word to his servant. "Lengthen her chain so that she may evade most of the water, but not until you have thoroughly beaten some of that arrogance out of her."

The lackey’s eyes gleamed with pleasure as he walked toward her running his whip through his hands. Indria closed her grey eyes, she could also see his end.

The sea, the sea she had loved to watch for endless hours lapping against the shore, pulled a bit of life from her with each ebbing. Now that the tide was out, there was some surcease from the pain of the salt water licking her wounds like the sting of a thousand nettle burns. They had beaten her, and chained her here to die. Worse than the beating was the unendurable thirst. Indria had lost count of her days of torture.

For five days, in fact, they had tortured her thus. They had left her chained in the grotto beneath her castle with neither food nor water. Day after day she had refused to give them the location of the third and ruling Audicil. Bristan and Gerfolan, her two former assistants would not be allowed to destroy all of Furth. It was horrible enough that their greed for power would destroy Acarfola and themselves.

More bitter than the torture was the knowledge of betrayal, if only they understood that she was a servant to the power rather than the power to her. The dragons had given her solemn warning, she was to protect them with her life. Misuse of the Audicils would lead to death and destruction. There was no escape from the fate to come.

The trick was to sleep while the tide was out. They rarely left her alone long enough for that. The helplessness of her situation was exacerbated by the knowledge that if only she would release the hidden power she possessed, the pain and agony would abruptly end. Using the Audicil was the last thing she could do. That power must not fall into their hands. The prophesy was clear.

Misuse the Audicils for thy own aggrandizement, and the destruction of Acarfola will follow. Should one other than the one appointed to wield the Audicils seize them from their wielder, the Audicils will destroy all they seek to save. If all three are taken, their power will vanish from Furth never to come again. All that was made will be unmade.

Acarfola was already doomed by their seizure of the two, they must not be allowed to take the last. The fools thought that since there was not person taking control of the Audicils, but two, that the prophesy would be thwarted.

A gentle nudging roused her from her pain-filled stupor. ‘You must eat, Prioress, eat and live.’ Her minuscule friends, the sea horses, had returned. For days they had succored her unbeknownst to her captors. Their tiny voices filled her mind with their anxiety. Here was another joy demolished by the seizing of the Audicils. The seahorses had changed from their life of frivolous excitement and enchantment to that of worry and fear in their care for her.

A fragment of bulbous seaweed brushed her hand, and obediently she stuffed the fronds into her mouth and chewed as much as her loose teeth and bruised jaws allowed. ‘We could find no water weed.’ Their lilting tones sounded in her head like a thousand tiny echoes.

‘I must have water,’ she pleaded. Her thirst was gargantuan. They would come again soon demanding that she reveal the whereabouts of the last Audicil. Time was running out. She needed all her strength to withstand them.

At the sound of footsteps descending to the grotto, her grey eyes noted the flickering light against the wall of the cavern. Her aquatic saviors vanished with the ebbing tide, and she raised her head to meet her tormentors face to face. She could no longer stand.

Reaching out with one broken hand she croaked, "Water."

"The dying have no need of water, Indria," Gerfolan’s supercilious tones echoed in the grotto like some bloated toad. Indria shivered, not in fear of the pompous parody of manhood that taunted her, but because she had seen his end, watery blue eyes protruding from a purpled face gasping for it’s last breath. "I see you are not so self-assured as in the beginning of your self-imposed punishment."

"Self-imposed, Gerfolan?" she croaked through dry cracked lips. The words where barely distinguishable around her swollen tongue. "You intend for me to die."

"No need to die, Prioress," the oily smooth sweet voice of her other tormentor was as grating on Indria’s shattered nerves as Gerfolan’s cold dripping venom. Fat Bristan needed all the charm his voice could ooze. His bulbous nose, stretched skin, and bulging brown eyes reminded her always of a blowfish. She stared at him with eyes he thought to be sightless. "Tell us where you have hidden the third Audicil, and we will be merciful."

One answer, "No," came out with the force of a shudder. Her seer’s eyes saw him burning, suffused with lava from a never-ending flow of an angry mountain. With one mighty effort she appealed to them one last time. "Repent of your wickedness, return the Audicils. Save yourselves."

Bristan laughed. "We have no need of repentance, Indria, we have Audicils. From behind his back he gently brought round the Audicil he had concealed with his girth. It had been unnecessary to hide them. She had known by the agony piercing her head that they were here. The Audicils continually hummed with contentment wherever they were. Two in proximity made a delightful harmony. The misuse of them had already garbled their song. The Audicil she possessed dinned in protest at their captivity. The sound was raucous.

Gerfolan also brought forth from his robes an identical object bringing it close to the other. A loud disharmonious blend of sound filled the grotto. Indria wondered that they could not hear it. "Tell us, or die. We have quite enough of your evasions and lies."

"Tell us," insisted Bristan’s sweet duplicitous voice.

Indria’s features became only more obdurate, and the two moved their audicils even closer together. The colors within the audicils began madly spinning. Their individual hues collided one with the other, and sent out rays of myriad color. The green fires hit and sprang apart like dueling contenders. The buildup of energy was painful. Soon the colors filled Indria’s eyes, and they burned into her eyes with milky whiteness. She watched the power building through the now engorged Audicils. The colors were spinning inside her body, pulsing with each beat of her heart.

A cacophony of sound now filled the grotto, and the two impervious wielders touched the Audicils together. "Kill her," they commanded simultaneously. A bolt of pure green fire erupted from the combining, and threw Indria to the ground.

They separated the Audicils, and with a hand above and beneath their individual Audicil, they shrank them back to their slightly larger than egg size hiding them in the folds of their robes. Tentatively they neared Indria. Bristan nudged her with his foot. Her once grey eyes had taken on the milkiness of the Audicils, and the green, gold, blue and red fires had stilled to the appearance of very fine opals. "Is she dead?"

"Give me your silk scarf."

"No! It is my favorite. I do not wish it to cover a dead body." Bristan’s sweet tones shrilled.

Gerfolan was testy, "I only wish to hold it before her nose to ascertain whether or not she is breathing." He grabbed the scarf from the decorative pin on Bristan’s robe, and held it dangling before the nose of the Prioress. It did not stir. "She is dead. There is no breath. Look at her eyes, they are lifeless. Loose her from the manacles, I want the tide to wash her out to sea where she will never be found."

Bristan wrung his hands, "I don’t want to touch her." His voice rose with hysteria, "I never wish to touch a dead body. We have killed her." Bristan’s smooth voice sounded bizarre uttering the cruel words.

"She would never have revealed the location of the audicil. These two will lead us to the third. The Judges of Light will have no power over us. My Audicil tells me that she has hidden the Blue far away. I am thinking of searching Tornedan. You should take your Audicil and range Fareandar. We will find it, never fear."

"How could she have hidden it so far away? She never left Acarfola."

"Why don’t you ask Durstan?" Gerfolan felt some slight contempt for his lesser endowed cohort, and allowed it to color his voice. Durstan was Indria’s bondmate.

Indria stood before him bravely and told him of her vision. She had seen the destruction of Acarfola, and what she must endure. In effect she was saying goodbye, but he didn’t understand. "Take the Blue Audicil far from them," he argued after she had told him what the Audicil had told her of the perfidy of her two associates. Durstan wanted her to take the Blue Audicil and leave Acarfola. "I will protect you, and it." At the culmination of her quiet prophecy he had stormed to their rooms tossing their belongings into bags, and boxes.

"You do not understand," she had said gently, "I am the Prioress, I must stay here and protect the Blue Audicil."

"I cannot, I will not stay and watch you die," his pain at her stubborn refusal to see reason made him demented.

"Why, he left weeks ago," Bristan argued. "He has not returned. I hear they quarreled."

"Why do you never use your mind? Her Audicil must have warned her. She sent him to hide it from us. Find him and we find the Audicil.

"Are you going to just leave her lying like that? What if someone finds the body?"

"Leave it for the scavengers, there will be little enough of it for any finder to identify." Gerfolan snarled savagely. He gave no quarter when his will had been thwarted.

Thousands of exited voices sounded in her mind. "Wake up, Prioress, we have brought you the waterweed. When she did not respond, they flicked sea water upon her face. "Hurry, rise," they chattered in unison, "The tide comes." The water was already lapping against her torn robes. With another wave thrust they dropped some of the waterweed into her mouth, and pushed against the globule to trickle some of the precious water inside her. "We are too late," they mourned.

Indria sat up, and smiled at her tiny friends. Her eyes, once white, blinded by the green fire, had returned to their normal grey. Recollection, however, brought tears sliding from her eyes in a rain of sorrow. Acarfola the beautiful would soon be gone forever. The prophecy that one would come to free her from her duty offered small comfort for the thousands of annums she would live alone.

Dragging herself higher away from the encroaching tide, she drank greedily from the waterweed. She must endure a few more days just in case they came back one more time. She did not think they would. The Blue Audicil hummed to her.

For three long days she waited, succored by her friends. shuddering with each coming of the tide. It became apparent that they had left her here to die. Outside, the storm that would soon spell the destruction of her former home, became audible from the furious roar of the incoming tide. Indria made a decision. Her broken fingers felt for the hasp of her belt, cleverly concealed behind the ornate buckle that signified her office as Prioress of the Audicils of Acarfola. She struggled some minims before the belt came open. Fumbling behind the clasp she opened a small compartment, and something gleaming and white fell into her hand. Something no eyes but hers had ever beheld in this state. The soft humming that had sustained her all these many days broke into harmonics, and flowed about her in a blue green aura. The aura licked her hand holding the tiny gem and her fingers straightened, returning to their youthful beauty and contour, completely healed..

As the song deepened and filled the grotto, her wounds disappeared. The chains, already severed from the boat ring, but not her hands, fell from her wrists leaving no scar. At a softly murmured word and a stroke of the flat opal, her robes mended, and the lashes that had stung her back for endless days totally vanished. The material of her tattered robes again covered her back. As the sea ebbed and flowed about her knees, the manacles that had slipped from her wrists sank beneath the waves. The Prioress stood tall and unshackled within the grotto. Her disheveled fair hair resumed its former sheen. Her formal headdress, that had been kicked into a far corner in one of Gerfolan’s bursts of temper, she restored to her head in pristine condition with a wave of her hand.

At her command the tiny flat opal filled with all the iridescent colors of the known world, but predominantly blue, assumed the shape of an ovoid slightly larger than an egg. She cupped her other hand over the opal as the gem stood up right upon her hand. When she slowly moved her hand upward in a drawing motion, the opal distended, swelling to the size of a giant troll’s head. She held it reverently between both hands. Around the oval in lithesome delight danced rings of green fire with sparks and licks of blue. Melodious harmonics filled the grotto, and the prioress’ ears. Her eyes beheld a marvelous vision, and held it in her mind. Overhead she heard the faint rumblings of the destruction that spelled the doom of Acarfola. Reaching out with her mind she noted with satisfaction that the other two Audicils were far away, and separate. A bright light surrounded her, transported her above the water, and dried her robes.

"As the Guardians of Furth will," she intoned with devotion. Bringing her cupped hands over the pulsing ovoid again, the rings of green fire darted back inside the audicil, and it shrank, eventually becomming once more tiny, and flat. Indria walked gracefully through the grotto to a fall of fresh water. Cupping her free hand, she drank thirstily from the cool fresh liquid. Then, walking yet deeper into the cave she climbed up to a shelf high enough to be protected from the tides. There amid the grotto’s blue wonders she stood, facing out toward the sandy floor and the encroaching sea.

For one last lingering moment she sent her thoughts fleeting through the air to find her beloved. Wherever Durstan had gone, it hadn’t been far, for he stood at the deck of a ship watching the destruction of what had once been Acarfola. The large ship was hard put, the ocean in turmoil, but she could see through his eyes as he clung to the ship’s railing watching the cone like mountains spewing their magma before coursing down to sizzle into the sea. Yearningly she sent a last whisper of love to Durstan. She saw him touch his cheek where her hand had brushed in a farewell caress. A small wisp of blue removed itself from the tiny opal and left the grotto to find him, she would be with him always. At her command two more wisps of blue left the Audicil and sped for the two that had been taken. They would find a way to hide themselves now.

Grieving, she sought but could not find her people. Some escaped in ships and overland to the desert, but many more died. Her sorrow knew no bounds. With one final look outward to her dying land, Indria cupped her hand before her to a square, murmuring a few soft words. With the other hand she took the opal and placed it between her lips. Then as if to keep it in place, she put her hand to her mouth. As her body inexorably became stone, she channeled her last lingering command to the Audicil, and to the future.