The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,90

fingers through the string that had held the Spiracle around his neck; the crystals bit deep in the soft flesh of his left palm as he grasped it tight. Leibnitz’ bony grip closed firm around his right. This had killed Eric Hagen, they had said... Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the Well.

Though the Well itself was only half awakened, he could feel its pull on him immediately through his trance state, the cold pressure on his solar plexus, at the base of his skull, in his eyes. His mind held hard to the spells of protection Jaldis had taught him the night before they’d entered the Void together, and felt the strength of the Void overwhelming him.

But there was magic there. The taste of it, the touch, was unmistakable; he raised the Spiracle in his left hand and saw the blue light that ran round the iron ring, springing in tiny serpents from crystal to crystal, flickering down his fingers like electrical bug feet, to lift the hair on the back of his arm. The Void was drawing at him—drawing him in and drowning him—but he held the ensorcelled circle high and whispered the words he had learned and used when it had only been a question of making devices that would let him breathe underwater, or keep him warm in places of lightless cold. He could see the dark of the Void now, a colored abyss without light in which burned not one distant gleam to show him the way through.

And that dark he wove to the Spiracle, like a man tying floating strands of silver spider thread one by one into a basket’s rim, binding the wild magic to follow him like a banner into the magicless world outside. The Void pressed on him, dragged at him. It was becoming difficult to breathe and he had to call on all his strength merely to remain conscious, but he barely noticed. When he moved the Spiracle in the throbbing darkness, he saw how each separate crystal of the ring left a track of shuddering silver light.

Magic was his again.

Eric Hagen must have felt it, bursting on him like argent lightning in the dark—joy like the shattering of a star.

Blackness rushed through the split defenses of his mind, sweeping him away. His sight went dark, and he fell.

A hand clutched his, the jerk of its strength nearly dislocating his shoulder. A voice cried his name. Drowning in freezing blackness, Rhion could see nothing—darkness, ghost shapes that tore at him in swirling wind—bitter cold. Then tight and hard, a beam of what looked like brilliant yellow light stabbed through the murk, and he thought he heard names being called upon, syllables of power, like falling sparks of fire, a resonant vibration in his bones. Fighting back a wave of faintness, lungs hurting as they sucked vainly at airless void, he tried to make his way along that light, tried to see its end.

Numb with cold and nearly unconscious, still he could feel the hand holding his. He grabbed at the sinewy wrist with both his hands, fumbling desperately, and for an instant blacked out completely.

Then he was on his knees on the cold stone floor, gasping at the moldy air with its faint whiff of ozone, shaking desperately and clutching the tall skeletal body that held him close against it. Though the room was cold and damp, it felt warm by comparison. For a moment the lenses of his glasses misted. Groggily he was aware of a name being called.

“Rhion... Rhion...”

His hands tightened over the smelly wool of Leibnitz’ shirt. Both hands... He gasped, “Oh, Christ, no...” and then saw the Spiracle hanging by its string, where the string was tangled tight around his nerveless fingers.

“Rhion...”

“Rhion, goddammit!” A blast of air struck his face as the door was opened suddenly; he got his feet under him and stood as Leibnitz turned. The new voice was Sara’s.

“Get the hell out of there, both of you! All the guards in the goddam world are coming down the stairs!”

Seventeen

“THIS WAY!”

“The door...” Rhion whispered, his mind still cloudy, his numb hands fumbling with the Spiracle as Sara and her father dragged him away into the dark of the cellar. “Cover it back—”

“Screw that! Come on!”

A second’s thought told him she was right. The jackboots of Storm Troopers thundered in the hall above, the locks rattled open... He was a fool not to have realized that von Rath, even in his dreams, would know