Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

"Seen what?" Tir asked. "That they've disappeared?"

"Seen what they're turning into. Seen why they can't go out in the open anymore." He pocketed the crystal, got to his feet, knowing coldly, clearly, with hard-etched certainty in his heart that what he suspected was true.

"Scala, too," he said softly. "Poor kid... Thanks."

He extended his hand, and after a doubtful moment Tir took it, eyes still wary and withdrawn. "You keep a good eye on things."

He released his grip after one quick clasp, making it thanks only and nothing else.

"Whatever else they tell you, keeping an eye on things is a king's job. I think it's time to tell your mama about this, and about some other stuff that's been going on. One more thing."

Tir paused, having scrambled down from his chair. Cautious, not ready to give.

"Don't look for these guys yourself, okay?" Hands on hips, Rudy regarded the boy, heart- wrung at how fragile he looked, how vulnerable. "You've told me, so now it's my job. I'll get some Guards and go visit Biggar and Wicket and that whole section. You're not walking around the back halls of the Keep by yourself, are you?" Kids did, he knew.

Tir shook his head. "There's bad places there," he said softly. "Spooky places. They smell weird. It's safe where people are."

"Good," Rudy said. "After I've talked with your mama, would you be willing to take me around the Keep and show me where these bad places are?"

The boy hesitated, tallying in his head whether this familiarity would constitute a betrayal of his dead friends. Then he nodded. "All right." His voice was barely a whisper. As he disappeared into the dark of the corridor again, Rudy saw a king's duty in his eyes.

People disappearing.

Rudy thought the matter over as he fingernailed up the tiniest slivers of enchanted ivory and porcelain from the floor.

You eat the slunch and pretty soon Los Tres Geezers start talking to you in your head, and you don't notice that Uncle Albert is turning into a pus-colored eyeless monster-or else you think, Hey, it ain't so bad.

And meanwhile the noose around the Keep was tightening. For the past four days he and his bodyguard had had to fight off at least one attack daily by mutated wolves or eagles or wolverines on the way back to the Keep from the circles of power drawn under the watchtowers. It was becoming almost impossible for him to go outside of the Keep to scry.

There'd been another temblor yesterday, and the daylight was noticeably wan. After a long search in the scrying table he'd found the culprit, a dark cone of ash and lava pouring fire and blackness from the bleak marble white of the southern wastes. Cripes, he thought, sitting back on his haunches now, staring sightlessly into the shadowless pale light of the workroom. What the hell are we gonna do? What're we gonna do if Ingold's dead?

He got up, unfastened the locks on the cupboard and cleared away the spells of Ward-which didn't seem to have stopped Scala's attack-and looked at the half-dozen little black knobs of protospuds, the tinier reddish beads.

He hefted one of the potatoes in his hand. Smooth, like polished hematite. He could just see the little eyes on its hard black belly, as if someone had taken the true essence of a potato, the genetic coding of what it actually was, and condensed it into this shorthand facsimile, designed to withstand all of time.

But it was alive. Deep within its heart, buried under all those spells of stasis, he could feel the unmistakable glow of sleeping life.

It's the answer, he thought. Goddammit, I know it's the answer. Why'd I have to be the one to stay here? Gil should be doing this. She's the scholar. But he was the wizard. He was the one who understood magic. Gil might be able to decipher hidden clues from the record crystals-from Tir's memories-from the visions he'd had through the Cylinder, all of which he'd meticulously written down. But he was the one who should be able to know what to do with the information. And he didn't.

Without Ingold, they'd never survive.

He thought back on the hideous sensations of last night. An attack? Somehow it had felt more like something else, heart failure, maybe. A few days ago, by exhaustive efforts at weaving a power-circle, he'd managed to contact Ingold for a few minutes, enough to learn that they'd made it safely to the Alketch capital of Khirsrit, where they were working as gladiators, of all things: Ingold with his hair bound up in a topknot and looking like an overage thug. But after that, nothing.

Scala's footfalls shuffled in the hallway. There was no mistaking that full-bodied sniffle. She was alone, thank God. He closed the cupboard door and locked it, casually draping Ward-spells all over it again as she sidled into the room. Her face was puffy and blotched and he saw again how her gown strained over her plump shoulders, and anger tweezered him again, remembering the fragile pointiness of Tir's cheekbones, the way Alde's shoulder blades seemed to be coming out through her colorless skin.

Scala was holding a covered pottery dish about the size of a mixing bowl, and her eyes slipped furtively from side to side.

"Rudy, you've got to teach me right." She sniffed again; her voice trembled with desperation. "You've got to find out why I can't do magic anymore. You've got to help me, Rudy, please. Daddy..." Her mouth worked briefly, then she got it under control.

"You don't know what it's like with Daddy. He says I'm not trying, but I am trying. I just-I just can't do it." She wiped her nose on her sleeve, then her eyes. "Please help me."

The pleading in her eyes was genuine. He wondered what Dear Old Dad's reaction would be when it became clear that he couldn't make good on his promises of future services to those who were counting on having a mage on their side. He could almost feel sorry for this spoiled, angry, self-important child, who faced for the first time in her life something she couldn't do and couldn't get anyone else to give her. The fact that she had once had magic made it all the worse. "Scala," he said quietly, "I'll do what I can. But--''

"I promise you I won't use magic against you, whatever Lady Sketh and the others tell me," she whispered. "I'll tell them I can't, that you're too strong. I'll do whatever you say. Only please, please give me something I can show Daddy." She set the bowl on the table. "I brought you this." Her words were a bare breath now, and she glanced over her shoulder again at the door. "We're not supposed to tell, because then everyone in the Keep will want it and there isn't enough. Master Biggar and Old Man Wicket only give us so much. But if you teach me., I'll make sure you always have some. You and whoever else you want, Queen Minalde or Prince Tir or anybody. I'll steal it for you. Just help me. Please teach me something I can do. I don't want Daddy mad at me again."

Rudy uncovered the bowl. The smell of it rose around his face, familiar and chalky-sweet, like medicine half recalled from childhood. In the cool bright witchlight the stuff had a waxy glimmer, and Rudy looked up from it to his pupil's bloated face. It was a porridge made of slunch.

Koram Biggar and Old Man Wicket. Rudy's shadow poured itself out of the darkness behind him like a monster ghost, ran along the wall as he strode past the glowstone in its ironstrapped niche and streamed ahead of him to darkness again. "Whatever Lady Sketh tells me" indeed!

He wondered whether Lady Sketh and her hapless lord were followers of Saint Bounty's gluttonous cult, or whether they were just allied with Biggar and his ilk because Biggar was hiding his illicit chickens in the Sketh enclave and giving them a cut; whether Lady Sketh-or Lord Ankres--even knew where those people went, who "disappeared."