The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,96
you do.”
Leibnitz put a defensive hand over the half-inch of grizzled stubble that covered his jaw. “The Rabbi Isaac ben Solomon Luria says—”
“Well, Isaac ben Solomon Luria didn’t ever have to pass himself off as a goyische bookseller on the way to Switzerland, so shave! Papa, please.”
“The child is a staff for the hand, the Yebamoth says,” the old man muttered, turning back toward the pool that still reflected the sweet silver green of the sky, “and a hoe for the grave. ‘Even a child is known by his doings...’ ”
Sara turned back to Rhion and, for the first time, reached out and took his hand. “Please come with us.”
He smiled and shook his head. Hate himself though he might for the selfish cowardice of it, with the dipping of the sun behind the black hackles of the hills, he had felt himself relax. Von Rath and the others would be beginning their ceremony. He knew where they were, knew that the SS mage’s attention would be fully occupied until after midnight. And in spite of his horror at what he knew would be going on, in spite of his loathing for what they did and were trying to do, what he felt was relief. He was safe. It wouldn’t be he who lay on the black granite of the altar under Poincelles’ knives; it wouldn’t be his pain, his magic, his death, that they wove into their unholy power.
It occurred to him that he perhaps owed it to this world to return to the Schloss and burn the place and its books to the ground. But even the ability to convert what energy he could raise to physical operancy wouldn’t help him against several dozen Deaths-Head Troopers. He could not risk even the chance of delay, and his own reserves of strength were perilously low. With the power of the solstice behind him, it was still going to take everything he had and everything he could summon from the lambent magic of the stones even to open the Void; Shavus, back at the Duke’s palace in Bragenmere, had better be on the other side with one hell of a lot of magic to get him through.
“I’ll be all right.”
“You don’t even have a goddam identity card!” Her hands, small and delicate and hard, tightened over his and she shook him, as if this would somehow make him understand.
“I keep telling you I won’t need one.”
She stared into his eyes for a long minute, then shook her head and turned away. “Okay,” she sighed. “You win. Papa, you stay here. Rhion, I’ll go with you to these rocks of yours. If you go poof and disappear, I’ll admit I was wrong. If you don’t... You come out of the country with us, because you’re gonna need all the help you can get. Deal?”
It might have been the turning of the earth toward the darkness, the lengthening of the shadows of the black ridge of hills, but it seemed that cold came over him, the leaden taste of defeat and death. He shivered. “It might be better if you got away while you can,” he said quietly. “Von Rath’s... busy... tonight; I don’t think the search will be heavy between now and midnight.”
“The hell with that, we can take the seven A.M. train as easy as the eleven P.M. Papa, if I don’t come back...”
“Then I won’t come back,” he said placidly, returning from the pool with a nicked and dripping face, tying his tie. “I’m coming with you. This,” he added, with wistful eagerness, “I want to see.”
Light lingered in the midsummer sky as they made their way down the mountain. During the long afternoon Rhion had cut an elder sapling with Leibnitz’ clasp knife, the only weapon or tool either of them possessed, to make a staff, on which he mounted the Spiracle as a headpiece. Now, as they walked, the last glow of the day flickered along the rune-scribbled silver, and it seemed to him that the five crystals knotted within it whispered to one another in some unknown speech. On the western side of the hills, power was rising, power called from pain and savagery and the black crevices of the human soul, but here in the hill’s long shadow the night was untouched. Among the dark pines and bracken, the cool air whispered of old enchantments. Rhion could feel a second ley when they crossed it, wan and attenuated but living with the life buried deep