The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,28

Hagen and von Rath, upon taking possession of the Schloss the previous fall, had converted into a temple for occult rites.

Its door lay at the end of a wide oak-paneled hallway and, like all the Torweg wizards, Rhion had a key. As he relocked the door behind him Rhion could feel a sort of afterglow of power whispering around him in the utter darkness of the vast, velvet-draped room, the residue of morning after morning of ritual work and occult meditation, of painfully tiny quantities of power raised and dispersed. Beneath that, he dimly sensed the even fainter silvery tide of the ley-line that ran below.

In years past the site of the Schloss had enjoyed a peculiar reputation—it was on this spot, Rhion guessed, crossing the worn parquet floor to the altar, here where the ley-line bisected the mound, that the ancient god had originally been worshipped and the witches had later held their sabbats. He settled himself cross-legged against the altar stone, a six-foot slab of black granite draped, like the walls, in black. Upon the altar a second drape hid the ritual implements of cup, sword, dagger, and thurifer. Coming here to scry was somewhat riskier than doing it in his room, but far quicker; in his room it sometimes took him as much as an hour of intense concentration before he was able to see anything in the crystal.

He lit the stub of candle he had to force himself to remember to carry in his pocket these days—thanking all the gods of wizardry that von Rath had seen fit to board up all the windows of this room and no light would show to the guards in the compound outside—and, taking the scrying crystal from its bag, angled its facets to the light.

The Dark Well was still there, wherever “there” was. It was quiescent, no more than a half-seen shadow in the absolute blackness of that other, windowless room. Studying it with his wizard’s sight through the medium of the crystal, Rhion estimated the size and proportions of that chamber: thirty feet wide and immensely long, the low ceiling propped with heavy beams, the uneven floor paved with the rough, damp stone he recalled. In fact, he reflected wryly, it was of a size and shape and composition to be directly beneath the ballroom/temple where he now sat. Ceiling, beams, and floor were as far as he could tell identical to those in the portions of the Schloss’ cellars that he had entered.

“I’m probably sitting directly on top of the goddam thing,” he muttered to himself, closing his hand over the crystal, the image dying in the darkness of his palm. The stairs leading down into the cellar were kept double padlocked, and it was a good guess that the only keys were in the hands of von Rath and of the SS lieutenant in charge of the guards. On one of his trips down there—unobtrusively supervised by von Rath—he had gained the impression that the portion of the cellar which should lie under the north wing was blocked off by a wall, the wall piled high with boxes. That meant a concealed door, undoubtedly locked, as well.

He cursed himself mildly for never having taken up Shavus on the old Archmage’s offer to teach him to pick locks. The only way he could get into that cellar was by magic... and of course he would not be able to use magic until he could get into the cellar and charge the Spiracle—if his spells worked, and if the charging didn’t kill him.

And unless he had another wizard to help him, it probably would.

Always, like an ox at the millstone, he came around to that again: to the Dark Well; to Poincelles... to trust; and to his instinct that stepping into the Void alone and unassisted would be safer than trusting the French occultist with the smallest information regarding his real intentions and abilities.

He sighed and pushed up his glasses to rub his aching eyes. Twenty days remained until the summer solstice, twenty days until he could—with luck—raise enough power from the turning point of the Universe to open a gap in the Void so Shavus and the others could pull him through...

If he could get in touch with them. If he could find another wizard he could trust. If...

He shook his head and, opening his hand, looked down into the crystal again.

In it he saw the sea. Black waves ran up onto beaches in darkness, beaches crowded