Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

He watched the woman he loved as she crossed the big mom to the door, her shadow reeling over the plastered walls in the glowstone's pallid light. There was a world of banked rage in the set of her back and shoulders-he wouldn't have wanted to be either Scala or her father at this moment.

In the door she turned. "She'll lie, you know," she said. "And her father will back her up."

Rudy sat for a long time in silence after she'd gone, struggling to calm his breathing, staring at the mutilated book. It was-thank God-the simplest of the early magic texts, and the lists it contained could be recompiled by Ingold and himself from memory-in our copious spare time, he reflected savagely.

But he remembered Ingold, white and silent with shock and horror, crawling carefully under the precariously balanced weight of broken stone and tile to extract this book and two others from the wreckage of the library at Quo.

He remembered all those long nights on the desert carrying it back, and the sense he had of the long years of magic and hope and effort that clung to its faded covers. He couldn't even really wish Scala ill, because on her well-being might depend so much of the future survival of the Keep. The little bitch.

He drew out his scrying crystal and calmed his mind enough to call Ingold's image to the stone. And got nothing.

"Oh, Christ, don't give me that again."

He tried contacting Thoth, and then Brother Wend, with similar nonresults. In the open state of his concentration he felt, not the deep-flowing, angry pressure he had sensed before-the weight of magic along the earth's fault linesbut only a kind of hot heaviness on the fringes of his consciousness, a gray interference that would allow nothing through.

Rudy mumbled a scatological comment and put the crystal away. He gathered the Black Book up, made a search for possibly dropped pages near the hearth-there were none, of course-and took it to the big oak cupboard that filled most of one wall. It was still locked, and the spells of Ward and Guard still in place. Everything on the shelves was as he had left it. For a moment he had a horrible vision of Scala going through and smashing everything in her rage, as his sister Teresa had done when she threw out all of his sister Yolanda's makeup during that stupid business about who was going to date that dweeb Richard Clemente. But that didn't seem to be the case. Yet, Rudy thought grimly. To Ingold's spells of Ward and Guard he added his own, woven specifically with Scala's name and image and the essence of her being. For good measure he placed the same Wards on the chest where Gil kept the record crystals, wrapped in their parchment indices.

Someday everyone in the Keep might have to depend on Scala Hogshearer for their very lives.

He hoped he'd be dead by that time.

"Ah, Master Wizard," came Lapith Hornbeam's pleasant voice from the doorway. "I'm so glad I've found you in. About this idea my mother has, for locating stock..." All in all, it was nearly twenty-four hours before Rudy returned to the fifth level and the magic of the Guy with the Cats.

As Alde had predicted, Scala denied having been anywhere near the workroom, and her father swore she had been with him and raged before the Council at Rudy's prejudice against his daughter. Rudy didn't think Scala would have the cojones to show up at the workroom that evening demanding a lesson, but she did. He blandly informed her that because some person or persons unknown had destroyed the relevant pages of the Black Book of Lists, he couldn't teach her anything whatsoever until Ingold returned and the pages could be copied from memory. "You're lying," she yelled and kicked the leg of the table, making the glowstones jump. "You can teach me other things. You can teach me lots." Her heavy brows pulled into a scowl. "Other spells. Real spells."

"Like I told you, kid, nothing works unless you memorize the lists," Rudy said, though this wasn't strictly true. There were spells for things like starting fires, and reading the weather, that could be taught in the absence of the concepts of Names and Essence, but damned if he was going to turn the little snake into a firestarter. Scala went beet-red and threw a temper tantrum, hurling everything within reach to the floor. Rudy had taken care that there was nothing breakable on hand-then stormed away to fetch her father.

Rudy spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find time to go over every record crystal and every book of Ingold's meager library to see if he couldn't learn something that would increase the productivity of the hydroponics tanks. A comparison between the preliminary inventory of wheat and meat and the production rate of the tanks indicated an ugly hiatus right before the winter solstice. Coming back from the crypts themselves, Rudy passed a group of the Sketh henchmen in conversation with several of those farmers who owed allegiance, for one reason or another, to Lord and Lady Sketh, only after he'd passed them did he realize that they'd fallen silent at his approach and moved aside more than people customarily did to let him pass.

On his way back from walking in the high woods behind the Keep the following morning, Rudy had another go at contacting Ingold, and this time reached the old man without trouble.

"Yes, I can restore the pages from memory." Ingold rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fore-knuckle. There was a halfhealed cut over one eye and a dirty bandage on his wrist, but he appeared cheerful and more or less rested, and the weather in the south seemed sufficiently warm for him to have put aside the bearskin surcoat he'd been wearing.

"I'll dictate them to her when I return," the old man said. "The penmanship exercise should make her regret her behavior, if she doesn't already. We'll have all the winter to work in."

Rudy shivered, for winters at the Keep were long. Even with spells to keep the area around the doors clear of snow, it sometimes lay up to twenty feet deep around the black walls. There was nowhere to go, and little to do except wonder whether the food would last and fight about trifles. Gil's reputation as a storyteller was not based on idle amusement but on a genuine need.

"In the meantime," Ingold went on, "teach her cloudherding and the Summonings of things like water, and heat, and cold, and air. Those are all things that work in almost direct proportion to how well one does one's meditations. If she sloughs off on her meditation practice, she won't get results. With luck, by the time I get back she'll have learned a little discipline.And Rudy-''He half smiled ruefully. ''-she's far from the most

obnoxious student I've known of..." Rudy shivered again, as the old man's image faded.

Looking up the valley, from where he sat at the edge of the woods, he could see the white horns of the St. Prathhes' Glacier.

Below him, separated from the Keep by the pear and apple orchards Minalde's husband, Eldor, had ordered planted, years before the coming of the Dark-at least half of them dying, leafless, from the ice storm-the herdkids' ashes lay buried in the cemetery, along with the skeletons of their dogs once the meat had been boiled off them.

From up here the wooden steles looked like Popsicle sticks thrust into the earth. Rudy saw their parents coming and going to the place quite often, when the unending work of replanting gave them time.

Through the hemlocks that grew at the southeast corner of the Keep, a small form was moving; even at this distance Rudy recognized Tir. Altir Endorion, Lord of the Keep and High King of Darwath, he walked the path alone in his bright blue knitted jerkin. Rudy watched the boy go from grave to grave, standing for a few moments at each stele, tracing with his forefinger the carved letters of his friends' names. Rudy's throat hurt, watching him. I would have done something if I could. After a time the boy raised his head, and Rudy knew he saw him, a still figure in mottled brown and black among the mottled brown and black of rocks, lichens, and trees. Without a sign the child turned and walked back alone to the Keep. Rudy gave him sufficient start to ensure that they wouldn't meet, then followed slowly. In the workroom he found no evidence that Scala had attempted to see him. He had taken to carrying the Cylinder with him at all times-though it weighed heavy in the pocket of his buffalo-hide vest-and sleeping with it under his pillow at night. From the cupboard he now took Ingold's list of spell-words and the various shapings of power seen within the record stones. By the quiet back corridors of the nearly deserted daytime Keep, he made his way up to the fifth level, the tangle of corridors and of rooms with their new-made doors shut tight.