The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,105
be. Gall, be sure to take his cranial index and other physical data tomorrow. Himmler will want to see them.” He signed with his finger to the sergeant.
Two Storm Troopers closed in on Tom from either side, handcuffing his wrists behind him and shoving him before them out of the room. Behind him, he heard von Rath say, “Take him to the house on Teglerstrasse for tonight and tomorrow. We’ll need him there for the demonstration in any case. See that he comes to no harm.”
Looking back over his shoulder, Saltwood saw von Rath step through the door of the bedroom, switching off the lights so that only the candle’s feeble gleam illuminated the boarded-up chamber. Taking a key from his dressing-gown pocket, he locked Sligo in. As Saltwood’s guards pushed him down the stair, the murmur of von Rath’s voice drifted behind him, with Gall’s crisp Viennese tones and Baldur’s adolescent adenoidal whine.
“Should we send for a doctor?”
“I don’t think it will be necessary. I’ve mastered all he can teach me.”
“Then after the demonstration, Himmler can have him? I’m sure Himmler’s right—I’m sure there’s some kind of physical difference that gives him his powers. Mengele should be able to make something of it...”
“Nonsense! Proper purification of the body, proper nutrition, and mental attitude is all that is needed for the working of magic.”
“Scarcely,” von Rath purred. “Nevertheless, I don’t think we need share with Herr Himmler what can be learned from—ah—experimentation. And after Monday’s demonstration we may not need to deal with Himmler again. For you see, providence has been kind. We needed a higher type of subject for our final demonstration, the type of trained warrior with whom our invading forces will actually have to contend. And now we have him.”
Nineteen
THE SOLAR AT ERRALSWAN was a small room, situated in the stumpy tower at the southwest corner of the rambling sandstone manor house, the windows that on three sides overlooked the walled-in orchards and gardens making it, on these cold autumn afternoons, the warmest and sunniest place in the house. Even so, fires had been kindled in the braziers of beaten copper; the sun that strewed an intricate lacework of bare tree shadows through the latticed windowpanes had lost its power to warm.
Tallisett of Erralswan stood for a long time in that bright, chilly drench of light, looking down at the locked doors of the cupboard-desk that stood between the windows, her arms folded, almost literally shivering, not with cold, but with a gust of irrational rage.
The cupboard-desk was of the old-fashioned, simple kind frequently found in the seats of country lords like this one, made of pickled pearwood, simply and cleanly carved. The pale wood showed up admirably the half-dozen small, oval splotches of indigo that dotted the edges of the tall, narrow, enclosing doors—when Tally took the desk’s small key from her belt and opened those doors, she had to do so carefully, so exactly did those telltale smudges coincide with where it was easiest to place her hands.
She already knew what she’d see when she opened the desk, but at the sight of her letters, in their neat pigeonholes, all daubed and thumbed with more spots of indigo, renewed anger swept her, so that for a moment she felt she could scarcely breathe. The top sheet of the little pile of half-written stationery on the minuscule writing surface was smeared, not only with those grubby blue thumbprints, but with a very fine white powder that in places had begun, itself, to turn a faint blue. This sheet she lifted carefully, holding it by the very tips of her fingernails, and carried it to the brazier in the corner; the two silky red bird dogs sleeping in front of it in the scattered glory of the autumn sunlight raised sleepy, hopeful heads as her skirt hem brushed their fur, but for once she had no greeting for them. She placed the sheet on the blaze and waited until it caught.
After it had completely burned she turned away, to descend the stone stairway to the gardens, and seek her husband.
“It’s Neela, it has to be,” she said.
Marc frowned irritably, though whether it was because she’d interrupted him while he was working one of his new horses, or because he resented an accusation against the pretty black-haired housemaid whom Tally knew he was planning to bed—if he hadn’t done so already—she wasn’t sure. From this, the largest of the paddock yards, one could look down the length of