Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,25
head bowed, face obscured by a fuzz of tightly kinked white hair, the tall, thin drow seemed oblivious to his inattentive students. He made no move to discipline them as they chatted and chuckled amongst themselves, completely ignoring their would-be instructor.
A moment more, and the half a dozen students probably would have something to whisper at. Zarifar might be a brilŹliant geometer mage, but he was more likely to summon a monstrosity that would devour him than one that would obey him. Or recite the spell backward and send himself straight to the Abyss.
Using his master ring, Q’arlynd linked minds with his apprentice. As he’d expected, Zarifar’s thoughts were deep in the pattern. He was imagining pentagrams within pentagrams while calculating the “golden ratio” of each in turn.
Zarifar! Where is Piri? He’s supposed to be teaching this lesson.
Zarifar startled, as if someone had just poked the tip of a dagger into his back. Two of the students snickered. Their faces paled to gray as Q’arlynd strode into the room.
“Master Melarn,” they gasped, each falling to one knee.
Q’arlynd ignored thema worse punishment than repriŹmanding them, since it left them tensely anticipating what might come next. And when. Where is Piri, Zarifar?
“Oh. Yes.” Zarifar blinked like a surface elf coming out of Reverie. “Down at the Cage, I think he said. He asked me to fill in for him until he got back.”
Q’arlynd frowned. If Piri wanted spell components, he should have sent a student to fetch them. That he’d gone himself hinted that whatever he was purchasing was someŹthing others weren’t meant to learn about. The timing of the trip to the Breeder’s Guild was equally suspicious. Piri knew Q’arlynd was about to appear before the Conclave. There was no better moment for treachery.
Q’arlynd’s jaw clenched. This wasn’t Piri’s first betrayal. Q’arlynd had already been forced, once before, to punish him as a result of his disloyalty. A kiira had later restored the apprentice to life, in order for the spell that had stripped the death goddess of her name to be cast. Q’arlynd had wanted to dispense with the apprentice afterward, but the ancestors inside the kiira had suggested an alternative. They’d promised to strip Piri of those memories that made him dangerous and disloyal, while leaving the bulk of his magical learning intact. Until this moment, Q’arlynd had believed they’d delivered on their promise. The mind-stripped Piri had been both compliŹant and, seemingly, trustworthy.
Now Q’arlynd wasn’t so sure.
“This lesson is over,” he announced, waving a hand above the floor. The pentagram disappeared in a puff of smoke, leavŹing the smell of melted candle wax behind. “Go.”
The students scurried from the room.
Q’arlynd closed his eyes and activated his master ring a second time. Piri came instantly into view; the apprentice hadn’t bothered to remove his ring. He’d probably assumed Q’arlynd would be much too busy to scry him. Piri stood next to a narrow column of stone: one of the posts in the shimŹmering walls of force that caged the deepspawn the Breeder’s Guild tended. His face and hands glinted with an oily, greenŹish tinge: the quasit demon, stretched skin-thin, that he’d bonded with, years ago. His hair stood up in stiff spikes, white and hard as bone. He held a wand in one hand, and stood back to back with another of Q’arlynd’s apprentices: Eldrinn, son of Master Seldszar, the master who would be nominating Q’arlynd’s school for admission to the Conclave in just a few moments’ time. Eldrinn also held a wand in his hand.
Little wonder his apprentices had chosen this moment for their duel. Q’arlynd had expressly forbidden mage duels in an effort to preserve the fragile harmony within his school. More often than not, duels led to serious injury. Sometimes death.
The injury or death of a student or teacher was something most masters took in their stride. They encouraged backstabŹbing and betrayal among their apprentices, believing that it flensed the meat from the bone, allowing only the best to survive. Q’arlynd held a different view. Any student accepted into his school was warned that any debilitating attack or suspicious death would be traced to its root. And then that student would be expelled.
The same rules applied to the five apprentices who served as the school’s teachers.
Q’arlynd glanced at the water clock in the corner of the lecŹture hall. He was supposed to be appearing before the Conclave just a few moments from now. He tapped his foot impatiently, inclined to leave