The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,38
metal frames and shards of glass scattered broadcast over the flagstone floor. With the heavy footsteps coming nearer he swept the bits into a black corner beneath the sink; and there he found the knife, a folding pocket blade honed to a deadly edge and still bloody. He shoved it and his bent glasses frame in his pocket and, holding his bleeding arm, ducked into the nearest closet and pulled the door to.
Through the cracks he could see the beam of an electric flashlight pass to and fro, then fade as the Storm Trooper crossed the room. Cramped in the mildew-smelling darkness, Rhion considered remaining where he was until the man had checked the laundry room and departed for good, but realized that he’d find the outer door open and, if he was worth his pay—which half the SS weren’t, but Rhion didn’t feel like betting his liberty on it—would come back and make a thorough search.
With swift silence and an earnest prayer to whatever gods were in charge of magic in this world that he wouldn’t encounter an unscheduled wall or chair in his myopic flight, Rhion slipped from the cupboard and ducked through the door into the hall. He made it back to his attic room without further mishap, trembling with nerves, shock, hunger, and exhaustion, just as the wide window was turning dove-gray with the first light of summer dawn.
Seven
“FOOLS.” THE SLANT OF the morning sunlight, bright and hard as crystal in these high, arid foothills, splashed into the shadows of the Archmage Shavus’ cloak hood and made his blue eyes glint like aquamarine. At one time the great southeastern gate of the city of Bragenmere had overlooked a wide stretch of open ground, between the walls and the broken slopes leading down to the plains and the marshes of the sluggish Kairn; but in the years of peace since Dinar of Prinagos’ usurpation of the Dukedom, a cattle market had grown up there, and then a produce market for those who did not want to cart their wares through the narrow streets to the market courts within the city, and lately a number of fair new houses had been built by merchants eager for more spacious quarters than were available within the walls. Even at this hour, barely after sunrise, the gate square was bustling with drovers, butchers, and greengrocers, the warm summery air choking with yellow dust and thick with vendors’ cries. “Imbeciles, both of them!”
Tallisett of Mere, every inch the Duke’s daughter despite the plain green gown she’d pulled on that morning when driven from her bed by strange, craving dreams, folded her arms and looked across at the cloaked and hooded old man who had been waiting for her on the steps of the fountain by the gate. “You didn’t seriously think Rhion would let poor old Jaldis walk into the Dark Well by himself, did you?”
“I seriously thought Jaldis would have had the sense not to go without my help.”
“Nonsense,” the Gray Lady said from her seat on the worn sandstone steps at the old man’s side. She looked up at him and Tally, shaking back the long braids of her malt-brown hair. “You spoke to Jaldis—you know how he was about his dream of helping the wizards of the world without magic...”
“And you’re the one who spoke to our little partridge Rhion just before they left,” the Archmage countered. “You could have forbidden him to go, and without him Jaldis wouldn’t have been able to.”
“I think you’re wrong, my friend,” said the quiet voice of the third hooded form on the steps, a tail, thin man leaning on a long black bow of horn and steel—Gyzan the Archer, greatest of the Blood-Mages. “Jaldis would have gone with or without his pupil to help, and how would Rhion have stopped him? He wasn’t that powerful a mage, you know...”
“He still should have done something,” Shavus snapped irritably, and glanced back at Tally. “And you might have done something, missy, to keep them both out of trouble, instead of letting them lose themselves, perhaps for good, at a time when the Order of the Morkensik Wizards needs all its strength.”
“And we others don’t?” the Lady inquired tartly. “As I’ve heard it, the rumors of a conspiracy among wizards speaks now of one Order, now of another. Vyla of Wellhaven says the Earl has banished all the Hand-Prickers from the In Islands, but in Killay it was Filborglas they arrested...”