The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,30

icebox containing samples of the blood of various animals and birds. And yes, he thought, smiling to remember the first time Tally had come to the rooms he’d shared with Jaldis, even a mummified baby alligator...

And for all the good it had done them so far, the shelves might just as well have been stocked with twigs and pebbles, like children playing “store.”

Baldur snuffled and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his robe. “Maybe the formulae are p-poison-specific? It could explain...”

“Nonsense,” Gall retorted coldly, returning his pendulum to its box. “I have said before, it is a wizard’s sublime faith in himself that conquers poison.”

“It c-can’t be! Then a talisman of protection wouldn’t protect someone who didn’t know what it was.”

“Precisely. It is only the illuminatus, the initiate, the pure, who can draw upon the vril...”

They were bickering acrimoniously as they opened the door, going from the lamplit gloom of the workroom to the sundrenched morning brilliance of the upstairs hall outside.

Von Rath sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t truly expect it to work,” he said. “And Jacobus would tell me that was why it didn’t, of course. But, Rhion, we have done everything, tried everything... You said the ritual of meditation this morning raised more power than ever before, but you know and I know it wasn’t enough, wasn’t nearly enough. Not even with every allowance you made for the position of the stars, the phase of the moon... Nothing. And with our army going into France...”

He paused, seeing the flicker of expression that passed across Rhion’s eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I know what you would be saying. But truly, war as it is fought now—as it is fought in this world—is the province of the first attacker. Had we not taken the initiative this spring—and it was they who first attacked us a year ago—we would have been driven, as we now drive them.”

“Yes,” Rhion lied, turning away to mop the spilled poison where it had slopped from the dish. “Yes, I understand that.”

Von Ram’s voice was low and urgent. “Please understand also that the war is nothing—it is, for us, only a means to an end. It is our last chance—the last chance of wizardry—to demonstrate our powers, to regain our powers with the backing of the government. That is why we must succeed at what we do here.”

He picked up the garnet talisman and returned it to a box of failed experiments, of talismans—properly made, properly charged—that simply did not work. The lamplight flashed across the jewel’s central facet and caught on a scratch on one side, as if the stone had been prised from a setting. A good-quality gem, Rhion thought, far better than most wizards in his own world could afford for talismanic work unless they had an extremely rich patron. He could understand von Rath’s concern—without the support of the government, the group would never have been able to work under these ideal conditions.

But it crossed his mind to wonder, suddenly, where the Occult Bureau got the gems it sent them.

“Rhion,” von Rath said, closing the box and turning with one slender hand still on its lid, “you haven’t been—coming down to the laboratory to work at night, have you?”

Rhion felt himself get cold. In anything but the golden kerosene light he knew von Rath could have seen him pale. “I did once or twice when I first got back on my feet, but not lately.” He could feel sweat start under his hair and beard.

Von Rath frowned. “No, this would have been the night before last. I thought the laboratory was disturbed a little yesterday morning, as if it had been used.”

While part of Rhion breathed a prayer of gratitude that he’d always been meticulous about returning things to rights after his nights of work—so von Rath did notice things like that—another part of him was able to put genuine puzzlement in his voice as he said, “The night before last?” He’d finished the Spiracle last week and had been catching up on lost sleep ever since.

“Yes. And Baldur also seems to think that his room has been searched, though he has become... a little paranoid.”

“I’m told cocaine does that.” Rhion remembered his own conviction that his room had been searched.

Von Rath’s gem-pure lips tightened; then he sighed. “He takes it to continue his researches, you know,” he said quietly. “There is a truly formidable amount of material to get through—diaries, letters, court cases dating back