The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,146

friend, on someone I cared as much about as I care about poor old Rhion. And I’d like to think I am that tough. But still...” She looked up at him through the tangles of her black hair, and there was a tiny gleam of self-deprecating humor in her eyes. “Does it sound as awful to you as it does to me to say I’m glad you told him?”

“Yep,” he said and, reaching out, gently took her hand, drawing her down into the chair with him. It was almost big enough for them both to sit comfortably—he felt her shy from the touch of his arm around her, his shoulder against hers. Then she relaxed, a wordless Oh, what the hell that went from her body to his like a sigh of relief; he’d been afraid she’d pull away, and lie the night in uncompromising loneliness and pain. After forty-eight hours of physical and mental strain, of which the last twenty-four had been without sleep, culminating in violent physical exertion, a drive halfway across Germany, and an automobile accident, he couldn’t get interested in much more, even if she’d let him.

But though he felt her uncertainty still, her hesitance and reflex caution, it was a start—the start of something he wanted more, and differently, than anything he could remember wanting since he’d gone back to Detroit from a year in the oil fields to discover his mother and sisters were gone, no one knew where.

Things took time. He sensed that time was what he would need with this woman, this girl. To gain her trust, her—Go on, say it, Tom!—love, he was willing to put in all the time he had.

Which was, at a rough guess, about twenty hours. But they drifted to sleep together in the armchair as if world enough and time lay before them like a warm English summer, back in the days before the sun-cross was anything more than a good-luck symbol superstitious women stitched into baby quilts.

In the hard electric glare of a corner of the Kegenwald train station, Rhion of Sligo, wizard, mad professor, exile from another universe, and fugitive-at-large, sat huddled in a black SS greatcoat with his staff propped at his side, staring down at the broken fragment of mirror in his hand. He couldn’t see clearly, for even the little effort involved in scrying tired him, and he was exhausted already from the thin cloak of look-over-there and who-me? that he’d held about him for the past eight hours—the spells that had let ticket sellers be distracted as they glanced not-quite-at the identity cards of men seven inches taller than he with blond hair, the spells that had caused pretty girls to walk past or minor fights to break out as the police or the SS came near him in train stations, and the spells that had given people the impression he was a smelly old derelict like Johann at the Woodsman’s Horn, a presence to be noted very briefly and then resolutely ignored.

But he was very tired now. He was freezing cold, for the night ticket seller and the single police guard on duty at the station were sitting next to the electric stove at the far end of the bare little room—men who had not seen him get off the train and would not see him leave. He was worn out physically with the sustained effort of magic-working in a world where the energy levels of air and earth were so low, despite the coming equinox, his body hurting for sleep that he knew would be far too dangerous a luxury. Food helped, though it was difficult to get the sweets he chiefly craved—he’d scored some black-market chocolate on the train but that hadn’t lasted long—and what passed for coffee in stations along the route didn’t have nearly the kick of the rations the SS got.

So his vision in the fragment of mirror was at first only shapes against darkness. He had, of course, used a shard of mirror to keep tabs on Sara and her father while they were at Kegenwald, to make sure von Rath didn’t move them elsewhere, or hurt them... though there was nothing he could have done if von Rath had.

Then the vision cleared a little, and he felt a pang go through him as he realized what he saw.

Sara and Saltwood.

Well, that was logical, he thought, seeing how dark the girl’s hair was, pressed to Saltwood’s shoulder, only flaming into its old crazy,