Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

"Well, what if you didn't?" Scala demanded, fleshy mouth pursing into a pout. "What if you forgot? You can't help it if you forgot."

"Then I wouldn't know that piece of magic," Rudy said. "And I wanted to learn magic more than anything I've ever wanted in my whole life, except maybe..." He shook his head and let the sentence die.

"Except maybe for Queen Minalde to fall in love with you?" Her tone was juicy with spite, gossip glittering in her eye. Whatever he said, he guessed, would be spread to whoever she could tattle to in the morning. He said simply, "Yes."

It was she who looked away, ashamed. "You're in love with her?" she mumbled at last.

"Scala," Rudy said, and she looked up at the sound of her name spoken in friendliness, "I didn't even know what love was until I saw her. C' mere." He reached carefully to the little shelf above his bed and took from it one of the porcelain bowls that Ingold had brought back from one of his scrounging trips to Gae-with some trepidation, for there were very few of them in the Keep, and after the Black Book incident, he didn't trust her for a moment. "Here's something you can do with those words you have to memorize."

He taught her the True Name of Water and the simplest of summonings. She had an attention span that would have embarrassed an eight-year-old, and her sweaty skin had an odd smell to it, unpleasant and yet vaguely familiar.

"You speak in your heart the True Name of Water, and at the same time you draw this triangle in the air over the bowl." The gesture was a simple focusing tool, but Rudy

had needed such tools himself for nearly a year. Within the bowl, water beaded on the jadelike glaze.

Eyes half closed in concentration, Rudy spoke the True Name again, reaching through the curtain of reality to the place where such things dwelt, scooping up a handful of water in his mind.

The beads on the glaze turned to droplets and trickled to form a little pool at the bottom. Rudy doubted the girl was aware of the slight dryness of the air as moisture condensed out of it, though he felt his own sinuses prick.

Ingold had shown him how to separate water from wood, and from blood and milk as well.

It took about ten minutes for the bowl to fill to the brim. Scala breathed, "Wow." "It's gonna be real slow at first," Rudy cautioned. He emptied the water into his bedside pitcher, wiped out the bowl with a corner of the sheet. "But if you practice the meditation every day, for as long as it takes a tallow candle to burn this far-" He nicked the one with which he'd demontrated meditation and held her knuckles against it to make sure she had the measure correct. "-then in a couple of days you'll be able to make the water come faster."

"Meditate two knuckles' worth," Scala repeated faithfully, her brown eyes wide, and picked up the rune tablet and put it in the pocket of her woolen gown. It was new wool - an incredible luxury now that they had no sheep-and dyed a rather expensive shade of red.

That ought to keep the little sneak busy, Rudy thought. And please Dear Old Dad and his new pals. He wondered how long she'd stay interested.

The following day Rudy was on his feet, owing mostly to the importunities of Lapith Hornbeam, whose mother's vaunted idea for acquiring livestock turned out to be far from stupid. It was her suggestion to use a Summoning-spell. When Rudy explained that he'd already scried the Vale, and the pass, and the river valleys below for anything resembling stock, Hornbeam said, "Mother wondered if it were possible to somehow increase the range of your spells? Summon wild cattle or horses from Gae, for instance, or from downriver as far as Willowchild." "I dunno," Rudy said. "Won't hurt to try. If any show up, we can feed 'em on local graze till we can get up a hay expedition downriver."

There was the usual fluster from Enas Barrelstave about "letting a wizard leave the Keep..." Does he think I'm gonna abandon Alde to run after Pnak and his gang? Rudy wondered. Meanwhile, Hogshearer assured everyone in sight that Rudy's departure didn't matter.

Rudy set out with Hornbeam and Hornbeam's mother and sister and brother-in-law-one of the Weffs from fourth south-and Lord Brig, with what passed these days in the Keep for a picnic lunch. He had just laid out the biggest circle he'd ever attempted, still shaky from exhaustion, when Thoth's voice rang clear and harsh in his mind: Look into your crystal, you stupid boy!

His concentration on the circle shattered. Muttering, Rudy made his excuses and retired to the gray-silver aspen grove, plunked himself down cross-legged by the picnic hamper and pulled the scrying stone from his pocket. "What?" And then, "Christ, you okay, man?"

"I am alive," Thoth said. Blood streaked half his face, making his amber eyes stand out horribly from the bony shadow of brow ridge. "I suppose this qualifies as your okay." He put the inflection on the first syllable of the word, in the fashion of the north provinces of Alketch.

It would be barely light in Gettlesand. Behind the Serpentmage, Rudy glimpsed stone arches and a smoky brume of torchlight; the wizard stood in one of the rooms carved

out of the original Aisle of Tomec Tirkenson's keep.

Shadows milled, and balls of witchlight drifted overhead or clung to the metal points of the wall spikes, casting eerie reflections over strange murals that sprawled over every surface and pillar and flaring in the old man's eyes. Now and then Rudy saw the flash of weapons, or a banner of whiter, denser smoke.

"The Keep was attacked last night by the creatures you call gaboogoos," the mage said. "Not the Keep, precisely, but the cells of the mages, which as you know are built against its outer wall."

Rudy had seen the Black Rock Keep last year, about half the size of the Renweth Keep and badly decayed, its hard black stone shattered in many places and filled in with blocks-or occasionally rough-cemented boulders-of the local granite and sandstone. After their experience with the ill-remembered Govannin Narmenlion, the wizards of Gettlesand preferred not to sleep within the Keep itself, and Rudy could hardly blame them.

"Our hermitages are stout enough to resist all but the most terrible storm," Thoth went on, "but these creatures tore at the doors and windows as if no Wards, no spells of protection, had been laid on them at all. We were trapped within our cells until one of the herd-riders who also has an out-cell managed to slither through a ventilator into the Keep to warn them within."

"What is it?" Silua Hornbeam-Weff, bow in hand, came over to where Rudy sat staring into his crystal. Rudy waved her sharply away.

"They weren't alone," Thoth said quietly. "I've tried to warn Ingold, and cannot pierce this gray anger that fills the crystals. You must make the attempt, and take warning yourself. If he's in Alketch now, he'll-"

The crystal clouded over. Rudy yelled, "Son of a-" and shook it, then focused his own concentration, as if he were sending Thoth a message, trying to pierce the inner alignments of the stone, the dull, buzzing grayness that suddenly seemed to fill his perception.

"- changing," said Thoth's voice, dimly, in his mind, "but always there is that one fact." The image wavered back for a moment, the sharp, exhausted features, the chill amber eyes, the panic-filled torchlit darkness of the painted Keep's maze. "They only attack the mageborn, but they will kill whatever comes between the mageborn and themselves. In the distance, at the far side of the Great Slunch, our scouts have-" The image faded again, and again Rudy sensed through the half trance of his listening the gray denseness, the heavy, angry heat. He waited. Once he thought he heard Thoth's voice say, "-slunch-" The image did not reappear.

Changing, Rudy thought. Who or what was changing? Those animals that had eaten the slunch? Or something else? "Master Wizard?" Lapith Hornbeam called out from the side of the interrupted power-circle, drawn in powdered chalk mixed with bone-dust and Ingold's Penambra silver in the trampled mix of new green and dead yellow grass. "The day is drawing on, and you did say it would take time to complete the circle. Is all well?"