Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

It took Rudy four or five tries to work his way through the maze to the front wall of the Keep. He returned again and again to the place of the original vision, speaking the words of memory again and watching the scene through, observing, not the old man now, but the lay of the walls. Once he found the place where the niche had been, it took him a good deal of experimenting to work through the illusion of the false wall. He set his hands and his mind to make the gestures of Summoning, to call into himself the unknown power as the old man had, and the imaginary headline formed itself in his mind: Wizard Zaps Self With Diabolic Death Rays Out of Past: Film at Eleven.

Or as my mother would say, he thought wryly, don't pick that up, you don't know where it's been.

It took considerable tinkering with more orthodox forms of summoning power, but at length Rudy was able to set aside the illusion. It was a fairly simple matter then to open the niche beyond.

The black marbles were still there, scattered across the floor of the niche, which was about twenty inches deep in a wall that was, Rudy knew, almost fifteen feet through.

Tinier seeds were scattered among them, like red-black beads. The satchel had perished, reduced to a scattering of desiccated fragments. The corners of the niche were filled with the skeletons and the droppings of mice. None of the marbles appeared to have been nibbled.

He picked one up. Deep within, he knew that it was food: ensorcelled, protected from harm and rot and circumstance, reduced at almost a molecular level to its true essence- a potato. And, Rudy sensed, turning it over in his fingers, definitely viable-if that was the term Gil used-if a way could be found to unravel the spells that had protected it for all these thousands of years.

Rudy drew a deep breath and let it out.

Completely revolutionized food production.

We might just make it.

He picked out as many as would fit in the pockets of his vest, added a couple of the smaller seeds, and stepping back a little, spoke the spell-word to slide the cover over the niche and settle the spells of illusion back into place. All he'd need, he thought, was Scala going into another snit and hiding these things. Or taking them to her father to sell back to the Keep for whatever concessions he could get.

God only knew whether he could get through the spells that had protected them, he thought, following the tracemarks of his magic back through the maze. That was damn big juju the old man had used, some of the strongest he'd ever encountered-he wondered again where the power had come from. Maybe Ingold could work it out. If Ingold didn't buy it in combat against Los Tres Geezers. Or wasn't stabbed in the back by Gil.

Or... "Master Wizard!" a voice called out to him from around a corner, and he heard the frantic running of feet. "Master Wizard! Quick! The Lady Minalde...!"

Rudy whispered, "Jesus!" and began to run. "Where are you? Where...?"

"Here!"

Rudy turned right, following the voice, damning the maze, and would have walked straight into the trap if he hadn't thought, There's no reflection on the wall around the corner. The guy isn't carrying a light.

It was a man's voice that had called him. And only children ran the maze lightless.

The next second a man's weight slammed into his back. Rudy was already backpedaling, ducking, weaving, when the smelly weight of a blanket was thrown over his head; twisting away from where a knife had to be coming; and he was right, he felt the blade score along arm and shoulder instead of plunging into his chest.

He struck, kicking, cursing, blinded by the thick folds of fabric; he threw himself backward against the man's weight and stumbled, fell, knocking his breath out of him, and when he tried to rise, the breath wouldn't come back.

He knew then that the dagger had been poisoned. Passionflower, God knows where they'd gotten it... His mind swam, vision blurring in the darkness as he struck at the grabbing hands and kept moving, trying to pull the blanket clear. He'd dropped his staff- another knife went in, this one hard and deep, and the blood pouring out was a sickening lurch of weakness, a long sinking fall. He yelled, summoning lightning, the first spell he could think of, and through the blanket saw its purple-white blaze and heard someone scream.

Footfalls. Swimming dizziness. Gasping, he pulled the blanket clear and found himself in the corridor alone.

Rudy's first, immediate thought was that he could not afford to waste energy swearing. Poison distilled from the passionflower-which grew in Penambra and some parts of Gettlesand but no farther north that he knew of-numbed the facility to work magic in small doses and was fatal in large ones.

The roaring, buzzing grayness in his head, dimly similar to the sensation he'd gotten looking into the crystal when he last tried to reach Thoth, seemed to close in his senses. It was as if he could not remember how to summon power, could not remember what part of his brain to channel it to.

He took his hand from his side and looked at it. It was dark red, as if he had set it down in paint.

Not good.

Fumblingly, he gathered what magic he could still command, worked the spells against shock, against poison, healing of internal wounds. He didn't know if he was doing it right. The power was running out of him like his blood. His mouth felt dry and his whole body cold.

The mousy, dirty smell of the floor, the stench of the cells around him, were overlain by a stink of charring, the dangerous ozone of lightning, and the coppery harshness of his blood. He only wanted to sleep.

Somewhere clothing rustled. The scritch of dirty hair slipping across shoulders as someone turned his head.

Rudy raised his head, blinking, and caught fleeting movement flit from the open door of a cell a few yards away. A foot pulled back from view.

They were in the cells all around him, watching. Waiting for him to pass out. "Tu madre, " Rudy whispered, anger scalding him back to consciousness. He tried to rise and couldn't but managed to get to his hands and knees. When he crawled past the door, he turned to look within it-Make my day, hijoputa-but saw no one.

Whoever they were, they were hiding. But he heard them in the corridor behind him.

Heard them shifting, slipping, moving through the cells in front of him as well.

Waiting.

No, Rudy thought, every breath a separate labor, like ripping trees out of iron earth.

No. His vision blurred. At one time he thought he saw the herdkid Geppy Nool, and Linnet's little daughter Thya, running away down the corridor from him; at another, indescribable little critters, like things from an Escher drawing, that scampered down the wall on spidery legs or ran lightly along the dirty floor in pursuit of a terrified mouse.

He became very conscious of his heart, trying to contract with muscle that grew weaker and weaker. He couldn't seem to remember the spell to keep it going, couldn't find the power to make that spell work.

You're the only wizard in the Keep. Alde's gonna die in childbirth if you buy it here.

The anger at them, at those unseen watchers, flared anew. Her death would be on their hands. And they wouldn't care. The smell of their clothing, their flesh, grew stronger in his nostrils.

He heard the scrape of an elbow, the tap of a weapon, against the flimsy wall behind him. Barely able to turn his head, he saw them only as darkness within a growing darkness. An eye flashed, and then a blade.

Dammit, he whispered. Damn it, damn it...

He stretched out his hand, formed in his mind the words, the gestures, the Summoning that had been done by the Guy with the Cats.

It was like inhaling radioactive stardust, like a shot glass full of hyperdrive fuel. Rudy gasped, turned, flung lightning at the approaching shapes and heard one cry out and fall, smelled charred flesh as he scrambled to his feet, ran and staggered around another corner and down another passageway before he fell. There was a ladder down, not too far from here-he could see his own spell-marks on the wall, guiding the way. He tried to rise and fell again, though his flesh still tingled with the power he'd called. He poured it inward, blocking the effects of the poison as best he could.