The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,33

me.”

On the newsreel screen the war planes made another strafing run at the crowded road. A man scrambled out of one of the cars and bolted for the roadside; his foot tangled in the wheel-spokes of a fallen bicycle and for a moment he tugged frantically to free it, desperate, horrified, as the double line of bullets rip-sawed the road, bursting a crate of chickens ten feet from him in an explosion of blood and feathers, then swept on to cut him in half. The guards catcalled and shouted facetious advice; Horst Eisler half turned in his wooden chair, called out, “Rhion, you got to come in and see this!”

And the wizard born and reborn, mage to the court of Kublai Khan and High Priest of the gray cult of Thoth in the silent deeps of time, strolled off down the hall toward the dining room to get his breakfast, trailing a line of bluish stench in his wake.

Six

FROM HIS WINDOW in the darkness, Rhion watched the cadaverous shadow of Poincelles cross the yard to the wire. The sentry had been loitering in the spot, smoking, for some minutes now—it was this which had first caught Rhion’s attention. Now he saw the Frenchman hand the Storm Trooper something and, reaching out with his mageborn senses, heard him say, “...maybe all night. Square the next man, will you?”

“Jawohl, mate.” The guard saluted. “Heil Hitler.” And he strolled away lighting a cigarette, his shadow fawning about his feet like a cat as he passed beneath the floodlight.

Fascinating. Rhion scratched his beard and leaned an elbow on the sill. With his room unlit behind him, there was little danger of being seen as long as he kept back far enough to prevent the glare from catching on his glasses.

His first thought, that Poincelles was out to do some courting in the woods, was banished by the rather large satchel the French mage carried. Services rendered were usually paid for more neatly than that. Besides, he knew the man generally got his boots waxed, as the saying went, in the village, or had Horst Eisler bring one of the barmaids up to the Schloss itself.

When von Rath had mentioned that morning that someone had been working in the laboratory, Rhion had immediately suspected Poincelles. Deeply interested, he continued to watch as the Frenchman unshipped two short lengths of wood from the satchel’s carrier straps and used them to prop up the lowest of the three electrified strands of the fence. That particular stretch, he realized, at the southeast corner of the compound, was not only hidden from the rest of the yard by the corner of the SS barracks, but was the closest the fence came to the surrounding woods. Though the fence followed the contours of the ground closely, at that point, where a little saddle of land connected the Schloss’ mound with the rising ground of the hills behind it, there was a shallow dip where, with the aid of props to keep from touching the wire, a man could get under.

Poincelles removed the sticks, picked up his satchel, and, brushing dust and old pine needles from his tweed jacket, strode quickly into the woods.

The guard had not reappeared around the corner of the barracks.

Rhion tucked his boots beneath his arm and padded in khaki-stockinged feet down the darkness of the attic stairs.

In the upstairs hall he turned softly left along the corridor past von Rath’s study door. It was shut, and through it he could hear the murmur of von Rath’s voice and Baldur’s eager whine. It was only an hour or so after sunset, barely full dark, and far earlier than he would have liked to try his maiden excursion outside the wire. Beside the big chamber where the Dark Well had allegedly been drawn, there was what had once been a dressing room, with a bank of closets along one wall and a discreet door leading to the backstairs and so down to the disused kitchen on the ground floor. The backstairs was narrow, smelled powerfully of mildew and mice, and was choked with bales of old newspapers and bundled-up bank notes, several million marks that had been printed in the crazy time fifteen or twenty years ago when, according to von Rath, this world’s paper money had lost its value through fiscal policies that Rhion’s banker father wouldn’t have countenanced on the worst day he ever had. Rhion emerged into the old kitchen, and crossed it to what