Stalking Darkness

11

The hands moved more often now. As Nysander gazed down at them through the thick sheet of crystal that covered the case, a trick of the light superimposed his reflection over the splayed hands below, creating the illusion that his head lay within the case, gripped in the withered talons of the dead necromancer. The face he saw there was a very old one, etched with weariness.

While he watched, the hands slowly curled into fists, clenching so tightly that the skin over one knuckle split, showing brown bone beneath.

Continuing grimly on through the deserted museum, Nysander half expected to hear the Voice from his nightmares, roaring its taunting challenge up through the floor from the depths below. Those dreams came more often now, since Seregil's return from the Asheks.

Summoning an orb of light, Nysander opened the door at the back of the museum chamber and began the long descent through the vaults.

He'd wooed Magyana here in the days of their youth.

When she'd remained obdurate in her celibacy, they had continued to share long discussions as they wandered along these narrow stone corridors. Seregil had often come with them during his ill-starred apprenticeship, asking a thousand questions and poking into everything.

Thero came with him occasionally, though less often than he once had. Did Ylinestra bring him down here to make love, Nysander wondered, as she had him?

By the Four, she'd warmed the very stones with her relentless passion!

He shook his head in bemusement as he imagined her with Thero; a sunbird embracing a crow.

He'd never completely trusted the sorceress.

Talented as Ylinestra was at both magic and love, greed lurked just behind her smile. In that way she was not unlike Thero, but Thero was bound by Oreska law; she was not.

The fact that she had gone from his bed to Thero's troubled Nysander in a way that had nothing to do with former passions, though he had been unable to convince Thero of that. After two tense, unpleasant attempts, Nysander had dropped the subject.

Other wizards might have dismissed an assistant over such a matter, he knew, yet in spite of their growing differences, Nysander still felt a strong regard for Thero and refused to give up on him.

And mixed with that regard, he admitted once again in the silence of the vaults, was the fear that many of his fellows in the Oreska would be glad to take on Thero if he let him go. Many were critical of Nysander's handling of the talented young wizard, and thought Thero was wasted on the eccentric old man in the east tower. After all, he'd ruined one apprentice already, hadn't he? Small wonder Thero seemed discontent.

But Nysander knew the boy better than any of them and believed with every fiber of his being that given his head at this stage of training, the young wizard would ultimately ruin himself. Oh, he would earn his robes, of course, probably in half the time it would take most. That was part of the problem. Thero was so apt a pupil that most masters would joyously fill his head with all they knew, guiding him quickly through the levels to true power.

But more than a keen mind and flawless ability were needed to make so powerful a wizard as Thero would undoubtedly become. Ungoverned by wisdom, patience, and a compassionate heart, that same keen mind would be capable of unspeakable havoc.

So he kept Thero with him, hopeful to change him, fearful to let him go.

There were moments, such as the night he found him tending to Seregil's injuries after the misadventure in the sewers, when Nysander caught a gleam of hope—signs that Thero might be coming to understand what it was that Nysander was asking of him beyond the mere learning of magic.

Reaching the door to the lowest vault, he shook off his reverie and hastened on.

Few had reason to go to this lowest vault, which for time out of mind had been the Oreska's repository for the forgotten, the useless, and the dangerous. Many of the storerooms were empty now, or cluttered with mouldering crates. Other doors had been walled up, their frames outlined with runic spells and warnings. But as he walked along, the sound of his footsteps muffled on the dank brick underfoot, he could hear the bowl and its high, faint resonance, audible only to those trained to listen for it. The sound was much stronger than it once had been.

The wooden disk had had little effect on it; its power was incomplete separated from the seven others Nysander knew existed somewhere in the world. The crystal crown was a different matter. As soon as he'd placed it here, the resonance of the bowl had grown increasingly stronger, and with it his nightmares.

And the movements of the necromancer's hands in the museum.

How Seregil had survived his exposure to the disk unprotected by anything but his own magical block was still a mystery. Equally mystifying was how little protection all Nysander's carefully prepared spells and charms had been for Seregil from the effects of the crown. In the first case he should have died, in the second he should have had absolute protection, yet in both cases he had sustained wounds but survived.

All this, taken together with the words the Oracle of Illior had spoken to Seregil, left Nysander with the uneasy conviction that much more than mere coincidence was at work.

Stopping, he faced the familiar stretch of wall yet again. With a final check to be certain no eyes, natural or otherwise, were upon him, he spoke a powerful key spell and cast a sighting through stone and magic to the small hidden room beyond.

Immured in the darkness of centuries, the bowl sat on the tiny chamber's single shelf. To the uninitiated, it was nothing more than a crude vessel of burnt clay, unremarkable in any way. Yet this homely object had dominated his entire adult life, and the lives of three wizards before him.

The Guardians.

To one side of the bowl lay the crystal box containing the disk; on the other, still smeared with the ash of Dravnian cook fires, was the flat wooden case holding the crown.

For no better reason than curiosity, he spoke the Spell of Passage and entered the chamber.

Magic crackled ominously around him in spite of the wards and containment spells. Taking a lightstone from his pocket, he held it up and regarded the bowl solemnly for a moment, thinking again of his predecessors. None of them, not even Arkoniel, had anticipated ever adding to the contents of this hidden and most guarded chamber. Now he had, not once but twice, and their combined song was a pulse of living energy.

His hands stole to the containers on either side of the bowl.

What would that song be if I opened these, brought even these three fragments together without the rest? What could be learned from such an experiment?

His right thumb found the catch on the wooden box, rubbed tentatively at it.

Nysander jerked back, made a warding sign, and retreated the way he'd come. Alone in the corridor, he broke the Spell of Passage and slumped against the opposite wall, his heart pounding ominously in his chest.

If just three fragments of the whole could force such thoughts into his mind, then he must be all the more vigilant.

Forced those thoughts into your mind, old man, a niggling inner voice chided, or revealed them there? How many times did Arkoniel warn you that temptation is nothing more than the dark mirror of the soul?

Inevitably, regret followed hard on the heels of memory. Arkoniel had taught him well and early the responsibility of the Guardians, allowing him to share the weight of the secret they preserved.

Whom did he share it with?

No one.

Seregil could have been trusted, but the magic had failed him. Thero had the magic, but lacked—what?

Humility, Nysander decided sadly. The humility to properly fear the power contained in this tiny, silver-lined chamber. The more apparent Thero's abilities became over the years of his apprenticeship, the more certain Nysander was that temptation would be his undoing. Temptation and pride.

Feeling suddenly far older than his two hundred and ninety— eight years, Nysander pressed a hand to the wall, bolstering the warding spells, changing and strengthening them to conceal what must remain concealed. It was a task he'd once thought he would pass along as his master had passed it to him. Now he felt no such certainty.