Laurell Hamilton - Nightseer

He followed with many backward glances. She stood impatiently, watching him back up. The hilt of his long sword peeked through hair and tunic collar. He had fastened it bare across his chest and waist.

“Belor, we must leave now.”

He came to her, and they entered the close walls of the stairway. Its small narrow steps and too-close walls seemed worse tonight. They pressed with a great weight that Keleios had never noticed before.

“You could have dressed before you strapped on your sword, Belor.”

“Oriona is lucky I threw on pants, boots, and tunic,” He continued in a near perfect imitation of the girl’s dorm keeper. “You be running around half-naked to the world, in front of my girls.”

Keleios laughed, “You’ve been practicing.”

The stones caught their laughter and intensified it until the narrow stair seemed to be laughing back. Belor’s grin faded. He shrugged. “News of you hurt means little time to dress and the need of a sword.”

“Your sword could not have helped me tonight, Belor.”

The stair continued its winding without aid of walls. The air seemed cooler and welcome. “But Luckweaver could have helped you.”

“Enchanted items are not allowed in the tower,” The tower’s shell ended in four archways leading to the points of the earth. Through each arch the library’s books glimmered, jewels spilled in the darkness.

Keleios found herself drawn to the books. She wanted to caress each glowing binding and each dark one, too. But even the nonmagic books deserved to be saved; the three-volume herbal, though not magic itself, was one of a kind. “So much knowledge, and it must burn.”

“Keleios, what do you mean, ‘It must burn’?”

She turned to him in the dark and continued talking, as if their first conversation had not stopped. “I know you are concerned. But a phantasm cannot be fought with a sword.”

Keleios walked through the south arch. Belor followed. “Do you have any idea of whose magic it was?”

“The spell of binding was herb-witchery. And it was powerful. Only two people in this keep could do it: Poula and Fidelis. Poula would not do it, but Fidelis would. She worships Mother Bane and the Shadow Lady. But I have no proof to take before council.”

“There are other ways to handle such things.”

“Why, Belor, you’ve gone bloodthirsty on me.”

He grinned. “I’ve been around you too many years. You’ve taken a law-abiding illusionist and made him into a warrior.” His smile faded. “I don’t believe in killing when are other answers. But Fidelis has no scruples. Waiting for proof to take council could get you killed. Keleios, you aren’t listening to me. Why are you are touching the books?”

She turned, surprised. “I am, aren’t I? Belor, if there is anything in here you value, take it, save it.”

“From what?”

“My prophecy.”

“Keleios?”

She laughed. She felt so strange, exhilarated, as if dream and vision were combining, yet she was conscious, “No, Belor, I am not in trance, but my dream will not leave me tonight. The keep will fall, and everything in it be lost. The strength of the prophecy is tugging at me tonight.” She took the black pouch off her belt and opened it. It too shimmered softly to the enchanter’s eye. She dumped out the spell paraphernalia. Enchantments Incredible vanished into it, as did the three-volume herbal. She paused at The Great Book , her fingers tracing its runes. “No, you must remain, but you will not burn. Relic that you will be, it is not my hand that will save you.”

She chose a thick volume of peasant folktales, the only one of its kind for Astranthian peasants. Much of the culture that had bred them was now gone. “If you could choose only one book to save, what would it be?”

It was so hopeless, so very many books and so little room or time. Belor chose the Book of Illusions ; it pulsed pink-white under his arm. As befit a book of that name it appeared to change in size and color, even texture—one minute fine leather, the next coarse leaves.

He handed it to her without a word, and she stuffed it into the impossibly small opening.

“How do you know which books to take?”

“I see them through a film of flame. The ones I take do not burn. And there is a feeling of rightness,” She shivered. “I must speak soon; the dream builds,” She turned abruptly, and he followed. “No, Belor, I need to finish this walk alone.”

“Why?”

“Don’t question me!” The prophetic vision swirled before her eyes. The library was afire; smoke formed a haze that rose toward the ceiling, explosions as the magic books caught and burned. A vision snatching her down. Keleios screamed at him over the roaring in her ears, “Get out! Get out! Leave me!”

He would not go. She drove him back with flame and fear, her vision nearly complete. She could not guarantee his safety once she was taken. When he was safely away, Keleios gave herself to the vision. Impossibly, a thin strand of spell wrapped round her, like an anchoring rope.

There was no time to fight it; the immediacy of the vision was too real.

Flames licked up the walls, the books crumpling, flaring, the shelves blackening. She stood in the burning rubble, which was not there, and screamed, “Fire!”

Embers were like stinging wasps on her hair and skin. She shrieked, “Burning, burning!” until her throat went dry.

A voice called to her through the flames, a voice shouting her name.

”Keleios, Keleios!”

The smoke-hazed air clogged her throat. She huddled on the floor, letting the smoke rise to the ceiling, trying to breathe. Pieces of the floor erupted in flame. Shelves crashed, crumpling in flames to meet the floor.

The voice called urgently, “Keleios, hear me!”

The heat seared her skin, too near. Her eyes teared, and breath was agony.

A cool wind brushed her cheek, a slim white hand reaching out to her. She grasped the hand as the roof groaned and began to bend fire-eaten beams to the floor.

Cool thoughts came to her. “Not real, it is not real. Vision cannot harm you. You are safe.”

Keleios stood in the fire and did not burn. A vision—now she remembered. This had not come to pass yet and could not truly harm.

The spectacle began to fade. The fire was a dim orange mist. A last wisp of acrid smoke, a flash of burning, and it was gone.

Keleios found herself lying in the dark; strong arms pinned her against a cloth-covered chest. The cloth was silk and black as darkness. Only one person in the entire keep would be so blatant as to wear the color of Loth, god of bloodshed: Lothor. Lothor the Black Healer. Keleios wanted to move away from his touch, but she shivered in reaction to vision, so cold. She was so tired, and yet the dream remained. She could not afford another vision like that.

She struggled away from the restraining arms, still shaking. Keleios crawled to the end of the shelf row; she didn’t have strength to go further. Her arms encircled her knees in an effort to stop shivering. A flexing of right arm and left calf showed that both daggers were still in place. A red witchlight sprang to life over the man’s shoulder and cast his high-boned face in crimson relief.

“Don’t you ever sleep, Lothor?” she asked.

“Not often,” he said without a trace of a smile. “When you can walk, I will help you to your destination.”

Keleios opened her mouth, ready to say, “But I don’t need help.” Truth was truth, but why did it have to be him? “It was you calling me. How did you know what to do? I thought prophecy was rare in Lolth.”

“My brother was a visionary. I am accustomed to assassination attempts in Lolth, but not here in Zeln’s school.”