Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

"That's what Lord Ankres said," Minalde sighed, and moved her shoulders, as if glad to be rid of some heavy yoke. "It was... ugly. And difficult. Koram Biggar said that as long as we've the wizards, we should be fine."

"As long as we've the wizards. " Rudy sighed and rubbed his temples. "Great. Thanks, Koram. Stick a target on my back, why don't you. When did he say this?" "This morning," Alde said. Then she smiled and rubbed her hand gently across his chest, as if stroking a dog. "But if you think Enas Barrelstave would have you assassinated just to convince people of his opinion..."

"Naah." Rudy sighed. "Although, come to think of it, they'd have to dump me before they reached the Alketch because-according to Ingold, at least-they take a damn dim view of magic down there."

"It wasn't the gaboogoos, was it?" Her voice was a whisper. Rudy shook his head. "Nope. It was definitely Our Side."

He slept, and woke, and slept again, and, waking sometime in the deeps of the night, tried to contact Ingold, to no avail. Whether this was the effect of the ice-mages' enchantments or a holdover from the poison, he wasn't sure-he, could light a fire and summon illusion, but wouldn't have liked to bet his own or Alde's life on his ability to do more than that. He couldn't reach Thoth, either, nor Wend and Ilae. Wend's hushed, half-whispering voice echoed in his troubled dreams, and the way the little priest had kept looking over his shoulder as he'd said, Something is there. Philonis Weaver returned to him in the morning with more draughts and commented on how well his side was healing, but the effects of the poison were slow to disperse. He would doze, waking sometimes to find Alde sitting quietly beside him holding his hand.

Sometimes he would hear the soft tread of a Guard outside his door. She brought him books from Ingold's library, old scrolls and a whole sheaf of Gil's notes, and for hours he searched, looking for some mention of the power that had come to him on fifth north, or the spells by which he had called lightning, or the name Brycothis. A day or two later the Icefalcon came in with the news that Bannerlord Pnak and about thirty-five of his adherents had departed, clandestinely and after helping themselves to considerably more meat and grain than the Keep could afford to lose. "By the look of things, it seems they attempted to take Yoshabel the mule as well," the White Raider added, setting down a fresh pitcher of water beside Rudy's bed. "An unwise decision, and in the event she is still with us. You should know, too, that Lady Sketh is much taken up with Varkis Hogshearer and his daughter, and has graciously deigned to receive them in her enclave."

''That's a change of heart," Rudy remarked. He folded together Ingold's oldest manuscript on Time and the alteration of States of Being, which he had propped against the wall beside him, and brightened the witchlight over his head for his visitor's sake, though in his heart he doubted that the Icefalcon really needed it. "I thought she didn't even speak to anybody who had less than eight different kinds of gingerbread on their House Emblem."

"You underestimate the ennobling qualities of a mage in the family," the Icefalcon replied. He'd just come from training, his fingers bruised and bandaged and pale hair dark with sweat.

"Master Hogshearer is received in many places in the Keep these days. I understand he's taken to promising his daughter's services, `When my little Princess is the mage of this Keep.' I think only his knowledge that his little Princess hasn't actually learned a thing keeps him from putting a pillow over your face."

"I'm gonna friggin' kill the bastard," Rudy muttered savagely. "No wonder he and Scala have been in here twice a day asking me how I'm feeling and when can she start lessons again."

"You thought it was out of care for your health?"

"Yeah," Rudy snarled sarcastically. "And now you've broken my heart and I feel a setback coming on."

"I shall commit suicide from remorse."

"Your mother."

The Icefalcon bowed gravely. "Your horse."

And departed. That was annoying. But in the days that followed, various of the Guards and of Rudy's other friends in the Keep brought him news still more disquieting, news of rumor, of gossip, of whispers.

"They're saying you should have refused to go down to the Settlements that day," Lord Brig informed him, leaning in the doorway of the cell with the dirt of the fields thick on his heavy sheepskin boots. "That you should have known, should have sensed danger coming..."

"Who's saying?" Rudy demanded, trying to sit up in the welter of notes and scrolls and codexes scattered over the counterpane, and His Lordship shook his head.

"Some laundresses, who heard it from one of the potters... The usual latrine chat. It's absurd, I know." He ran a hand over his dark tousle of hair. "Just thought you ought to know."

"I can see the argument with Ingold," Rudy said to Minalde when she came in later, exhausted and speechless with exasperation after a particularly contentious meeting of the Council. "Yeah, maybe he shouldn't go off scavenging every summer like he does, though if he hadn't, we'd never have gotten that oil of vitriol to experiment with for killing slunch. But why they should extend that to me..."

"Because you're here," Minalde said softly. "Because you're one of the things that keeps me in power. Because without you, an alliance between Lady Sketh and Lord Ankres might just prove strong enough to take control of Tir away from me."

She rested a hand on her belly protectively, and Rudy saw how thin it was, its rings abandoned when they no longer fit. He reached out and laid his own on hers.

"Lord Sketh is a cousin of mine, you know. He's started calling Tir 'cousin,' and telling him how he has to learn to be a man. If he can get Lord Ankres on his side, he has the position to step into regency, and control of the Keep."

"He can't do that, can he?" Rudy asked uneasily. "What's Lord Ankres got against you?"

Her hand moved gently over the child within her. "That I've given myself to a wizard. That I've violated Church. It's one reason I've been so careful with you, Rudy. The child could be anyone's; no one can prove who the father is. Yes, everyone knows-but most people don't want to. Ankres has a very strong sense of what's proper. It's what has kept him loyal to me, but this has put his loyalty to the test. And now Lady Sketh is working on having an alternative mage, should anything happen to you." But with all that, Rudy knew in his heart he couldn't stop teaching Scala whatever the girl could learn. He put her to memorizing the less devastating of the Runes-though they were all pretty dangerous-and noted uneasily that she'd acquired a string of what looked like real pearls around her unwashed neck, pearls he'd last seen on Lady Sketh.

"I can't learn these," Scala whined.

He set the notes aside, almost subconsciously putting them between his own body and the wall.

Scala threw the wax tablet down on the bed. "They're too hard." Rudy opened his mouth to say, Tough noogie, kid, but something in those puffy, defiant eyes stopped him. Cripes, old Varkis is probably all over her butt to learn something he can trade on, he thought.

His voice was gentle when he said, "Magic's hard, Scala. It's hard for me. It makes me nuts when Ingold tells me to figure out something for myself." He reached out, trying not to wince at the pain in his side, and picked up the tablet from the faded quilt.

"You know how he taught me the Runes? We were camped out one night in the desert-"

And Ingold had been in the midst of his black depression after the destruction of Quo, but Rudy suspected that hadn't affected his teaching style all that much. "-and he wrote out the whole cycle of them, all forty-seven, in a circle around the campfire. He didn't tell me what they were for and he didn't tell me to memorize them. He just assumed from then on that I knew them, and when he told me how to use one or another, I'd damn well better know what it looked like."