He needed to escape. He needed to break out of this place.
He forced himself to think, to concentrate on his plans. It was too easy to lose track of time in this place, to lose himself in his far too vivid dreams. He had slowly become himself again. Over the long millennia he had gathered power. He had found holes in the fabric of the Vortex. He knew where it was deteriorating. He knew where he could break out when the time came.
The time was almost right. The stars were in the correct position. The power was within his grasp. Soon he would escape from this sterile, dull, haunted place and write his name in blood on the pages of history.
He would take vengeance on all of the line of Aenarion.
chapter Four
‘What do you know of the Art?’ Lady Malene asked.
She had knocked this time before entering Teclis’s chamber. She still looked around distastefully though, then went over to the windows and threw the shutters open, letting in fresh air and the unaccustomed sunlight.
It was morning then, Teclis thought. He had lived through another night.
‘Just what I have read in my father’s books of theory and what I have picked up from talking to him. He will not let me read his spellbooks yet.’ Teclis coughed and could not stop coughing. His lungs felt full of something and made a horrible wheezing sound.
Malene looked at him with distaste. She was not used to being around the infirm. Few elves were. It made him want to limp away and hide.
‘One of the things your father and I have been talking about is your education,’ she said at last. ‘He feels that you would be better apprenticed to one such as I than to him. He says your gifts are more suited to an active school of magic. You are sixteen today. You are of an age to begin proper study of the Art. If you wish to be taught.’
Teclis looked at her with wonder. He tried to push himself upright. The effort made his shoulder ache and left him feeling exhausted. Even that could not dim his excitement. Was it possible that Malene really would teach him to work magic? He forced himself to look her in the eye and say, ‘I want to learn all you can teach me.’
‘That may take a very long time,’ she said.
‘We are elves. We have time.’
‘I am not sure you do.’
‘You do not want to waste your time teaching one who might not live to be grateful for it, is that it?’ Teclis could not keep his bitterness from showing. He felt as if someone had shown him a treasure he had desired all his life and then snatched it away.
Lady Malene shook her head. ‘No. I will teach you what I can, in whatever time you have to learn it, once the Seers have pronounced you fit to be taught.’
‘So I must await their permission?’ He could not keep the sourness out of his voice. Another barrier between himself and his heart’s desire. ‘That is not fair.’
He wanted so hard to be a mage. He knew he could never be like Tyrion, swift and strong and certain, but he felt he had it in himself to be a mage like his father. He could see the winds of magic perfectly when they blew and felt the tug of power whenever his father used the slightest of cantrips.
‘There are certain secret societies and cults who believe that one of the Blood will draw the Sword of Khaine and bring about the end of the world,’ she said this as if she was imparting a great secret.
‘It won’t be me. I want to be a mage. What use have I for a sword?’
She smiled at that and her face was lovely for a moment but then it became serious again. ‘The Art can be a terrible weapon and a mage under the Curse of Aenarion can be a terrible foe.’
Teclis cocked his head to one side. ‘There have been such then?’
‘Of course.’
‘How is it that I never read of them?’
Lady Malene’s smile showed her amusement at his arrogance. ‘So in your sixteen years, you have become acquainted with everything written in seven millennia of asur history? You are quite the scholar.’
Teclis felt his face flush and he started to cough again. The spasm wracked his body painfully. He realised how foolish and arrogant he must sound to Lady Malene, when really