Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

Like candleflame they were gone.

Gently, so as not to wake Minalde, Rudy drew the Cylinder from his vest and looked into its darkness. He wanted to see Dare again and the Lady Gisa, but the image that was there-that seemed to have been there waiting for him forever-was that of the Bald Lady, in the black-walled chamber he recognized clearly this time as the crypt chamber.

Thin traceries of silver light still marked the walls, like thaumaturgical scaffolding, but he sensed that the Keep above them, though whole now and complete, was deserted, filled only with a vast emptiness almost more frightening than the night outside.

The Bald Lady sat in the center of a huge diagram of power, a sphere rather than a circle, wrought of silver and light and blood and moving lightning that hung in the air, penetrated the black stone underfoot, the whole of it pulsing and whispering with the radiance of unseen starlight.

A small porcelain bowl was cradled in one hand, and as Ingold had said, she was performing the easiest, the simplest, the most basic and elemental of Summonings, the one he had tried to teach Scala.

She was Summoning water.

But it came to her through the great web of power. The water ran and trickled down traced threads of lightning and starlight, passed through the flames of the candles burning on the periphery of the diagram and through the ochre earth and silver of the sweeping power-curves. It was the simplest of Summonings, but it was done through the web of Life.

When the vessel was full, she let the diagram fade and from the glass dish at her side took something like a little black bead, which she dropped into the water.

"Making soup?" inquired a good-natured voice, and the Bald Lady turned, the ghost of what had been a smile flickering to her eyes.

"In a sense."

Standing in the workroom doorway, the Guy with the Cats looked a little younger than Rudy had seen him on fifth north, though he still looked about a hundred fifty and leaned on his staff.

It was before he'd grown his hair out, the scalp tattoos faded like much-washed denim. One of his cats lay over his shoulder, the big gray Rudy had seen snoozing on the table next to him in one of the videos.

"Prathhes would have it you've gone off to commune with the Evil Ones."

She sighed and leaned her forehead on her illuminated hand. In a small voice she whispered, "I'm not far from it, my friend."

"My dear child..." He stepped forward quickly and put his hands on her shoulders, eyes filled with concern. "My dear child, we did everything we could. We worked the spell on the cusp of the stars' movement, when the planets were aligned with moon and sun- of all this century, the single night where the whole sky was a reflecting glass of power..."

"And as a result, Gisa and all the folk coming up from the valley-" she began, and the Guy with the Cats tightened his grip on her, shook his head.

"It wasn't our fault," he said softly. "It wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could have done. And there was nothing we could do about the other wizards whose help you called on for the Raising of Power, whom the High Lord put under arrest. We did what we could."

"And it wasn't enough," she said softly. "It wasn't enough. The power in the Keep is not sufficient to preserve it, to keep it alive and working for who knows how long before it is safe to leave. Who knows what magic will be summoned against it, and against those within? Though we bound the power of the stars, of the moon and the Earth, into the stone of the walls, there were not enough of us. And we are doomed, and all our world with us."

She passed her hand along the high, bald curve of her head, and Rudy saw how old the lids of her eyes were and how the fine lines settled in the corners of her mouth. The old man said nothing, only stood looking down at her with grief and pity in his eyes, stroking his big gray cat.

"I had a dream last night, Amu Bel," she said. "A dream within a dream. A dream of holding guardianship, of binding the power of the stars and the Earth into spells that would preserve forever. A dream of cold, and waiting in the cold; a dream of three sleepers who turned in their sleep, thinking it was time to wake. Three guardians, dreaming of that which they guarded and preserved. Or maybe-I cannot remember clearly-the guardians were dreamed of, dreamed into existence, by that which they guarded. Is this familiar to you, Amu Bel?"

She rose to her feet, and her hand stretched forth. The shape of the gesture was familiar to Rudy, the angle and curve that old Amu Bel had used when he'd opened the niche on fifth north.

But the woman sketched images, shapes that Rudy saw at once were figures of power, the ectoplasm of concentrated magic, though as unlike the diagrams of the magic he knew as the night-gliding polyps of the primordial sea floor were different from a New York taxicab. Alien shapes. Alien and frightening.

For a moment she let the shapes float in the air between them, glowing cones that pulsed and shifted and moved in a dance that was the paradigm of their power, changing size in a curious fashion, as if they were coming closer or moving farther away through a dimension that lay at ninety degrees to all perceived reality. And yet, Rudy thought, in a way he understood that they were exactly the same as the circles of power that he drew, the sphere of light and shadow that the Bald Lady had formed. They existed for the same purpose and delineated the same things. She let the images fade.

Amu Bel shook his head. "This is something of which I have never heard. I cannot even imagine how to call forth power from such... such configurations. This is what you dreamed?"

She nodded. "I hoped it might mean something to you. That it might help us to find a way to-to connect the Keep directly into the power of the Earth, the power of the stars. To call it into a life that would hold it in magic forever." "There is no such thing as forever, Brycothis," Amu Bel whispered. "Then until the world changes and we can come forth again. Surely," she said softly, "that is not too much to ask?"

"For the wounded and the sick, the breath of life between their lips is all they dare ask," the old man replied. "We can only do what we can and trust that we will be guided when the peril is worst."

She lowered her head to her hand again and did not turn around when he departed, he and his cat. In time she sighed, a deep and bitter breath, and looked up again, and Rudy could see the tears on her face.

She murmured, "You sent that dream to me, didn't you? You who dream of your three guardians; you who are the living guardian..."

She shook her head. "I can't," she whispered, her voice almost below hearing, and she closed her fists tight and pressed them to her lips, as if fearing lest any see how they trembled. "I can't."

But in her voice Rudy heard that whatever it was she said she could not do-whatever it was that she would descend all those levels of stairways to the heart of the crypts to do, she knew that she could, and she must. Kneeling again beside the pottery bowl, she reached inside and picked out the little black bead that she had put into the water. She shook the drops from it and laid it on the floor beside the bowl. Then she stood and gathered up her midnight-blue wool cloak, wrapping it around her, the tears starting again from her eyes.

She whispered, "Dare, my friend, forgive me. And farewell."

Turning, she walked from the room-to descend to the crypts, Rudy thought. To pass through all those rooms, touching the hydroponics tanks, the wyr-webs, the walls, bidding them farewell, before she passed into darkness.

On the floor beside the pottery bowl he saw the black bead, still wet from the water that had been called through the Sphere of Life. He saw that it had swelled to twice or thrice its original size, and put forth a threadlike white root and a green leaf.