Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

That particular set of symbols had changed only out of intuition; the Old One had seen that clearly, that, just as in a dream, one part of his mind had solved a problem while his consciousness was looking another way. But it had given him an idea. What if he made a special room—a temple, even—and filled it with dweomer-charged symbols? Would they perhaps change as tides from the future touched them and tell the secrets of time to come? Although it had taken him years, in the end the Old One had made the idea work.

That afternoon he sat in his chair and called up his temple of Time. Since this working was a purely mental one, he was fully awake, merely concentrating with an intensity beyond the reach of an untrained mind. The first building was a tall, square tower, made of white stone, that stood on a hill; one side of the hill was in full sunlight, the other, in moonlight. He walked round to the moonlit side and went in one of the four doors that opened into the first of twelve stories. Each wall had seven windows, and in the center was a circular staircase of fifty-two steps. He went up, barely glancing at the collection of objects that filled each room, until he reached the twelfth floor.

Standing where he’d placed them round the staircase were the statues of four elves, two male, two female, all with their backs to the stairs as if they were staring out the windows. Beyond them was a statue of Rhodry, as close to the descriptions he’d heard as the Old One could make it, except that he’d dressed the statue all in red. At Rhodry’s feet lay the silver-and-blue dragon of Aberwyn. Nearby was a stylized statue meant to represent Jill, a pretty blond with a sword in her hand. Just beyond her was—nothing. The Old One felt a shudder run down his back when he realized that Alastyr’s image had utterly vanished. He should have expected that, he supposed; it showed that the temple was firmly linked to higher forces. All around were various other symbols and objects, a statue of Nevyn, a broken elven longbow, various Wildfolk holding things that had associations in the Old One’s mind, but he ignored them at first and crossed to one of the windows.

Outside a mist swirled, and he steadied his nerves before he peered into it. Strange creatures sometimes came there, because even though the temple had started out as a mental construct only, over the many years he’d worked in it, it had started to acquire an astral reality as well, as any image will if ensouled with enough force. Yet that particular day he saw only moonlight swirling through the mist rather than cryptic images of future events. He went round to all the moon-side windows, but always he was disappointed. As he turned back to the stairs, something caught his eye, and he stopped to examine the statue of Rhodry. There was a difference, some tiny thing—he looked it over until at last he found the change. There were tiny roses growing around the index finger of Rhodry’s left hand, dead-white roses so perfectly formed that their thorns had raised a drop of blood on the statue’s finger. Puzzled he turned away, only to stop and stare again: the statues of the elves were laughing at him.

All at once he was terrified. He heard small noises, a rustling at the windows as if something were trying to get in. As he started down the steps he heard the distant laughter, heard music playing like a whisper on the wind that suddenly blew around his tower. In panic he ran, clattering down the steps, leaping from floor to floor, till at last he reached the safe silence of the bottom story, where the statues of long-dead archons stared at him as if disapproving of his unseemly haste.

There he calmed himself. The tower was only a mental image, his construct, quite unreal, and he’d been a stupid fool to give in to that inexplicable fear. All that he had to do was open his eyes and the temple would disappear back into his memory. Yet he wondered then just how real the temple might have become, if perhaps he might find it—or some strange, distorted version of it—waiting for him on the astral plane if he traveled there to look. For a moment he was afraid to attempt opening his eyes in case he found himself trapped in the vision. Then he forced himself to walk out one of the sunlit doors, to look at the mental hillside—and to open his eyes.

His familiar room appeared to him, his desk, the litter of scrolls, the tiled floor, the open window. With a sight that was closer to a gasp of relief, he got up and went on trembling legs to ring the gong for a servant. One of his well-trained young men appeared almost immediately.

“Bring chilled wine—white, but not one of the best vintages.”

The slave bobbed his head, then ducked out of the room. The Old One waddled back to his chair and sat down heavily, cursing in his mind Rhodry Maelwaedd and his entire clan. Then he reminded himself that Rhodry was only a minor irritant compared to the Master of the Aethyr. It was Nevyn who had destroyed Alastyr, Nevyn who had trapped his apprentice, Nevyn who stood like a dun wall between the Old One and his ultimate goal, that of exciting such hatred and suspicion between Deverry men and the Westfolk that open war would rage between them. In the end the men of Deverry would win. The elven race were few in number; they had few children, too, while human beings bred like rats. If things came to a long war, then the world would be rid of the elves.

It was not, mind, that the Old One hated the elves in any emotional sense. They were, quite simply, in his way with their instinctive honor and their affinity for the dweomer of Light. He didn’t need their obscure predictions and image-workings to tell him that if ever their dweomer joined forces with the dweomer of Deverry on any wide front, then his Dark Brotherhood was doomed. He had no intention of letting such a thing happen. The Maelwaedd clan, and especially Rhodry, were marked by the omens to be the reconcilers between elf and man in some convoluted way that the Old One couldn’t fathom, and thus, they too must die. Yet as he brooded over his wine that afternoon, his simple irritation that Rhodry had ruined his plans grew into something close to a hatred, and that rage grew until it spilled over onto Rhodry’s clan and, most of all, Rhodry’s protector, Nevyn himself.

Long did he consider, until at last he found the seed of a plan. Every man in the Dark Brotherhood was threatened by this summer’s turn of events. No doubt he could call a meeting of the council and convince them to join forces to wipe the threat away. They would have to plan carefully, work slowly, and hide their actual dweomer until the end, but if all went well, they would win.

“Oh, yes,” he said aloud. “The Master of the Aethyr must die.”

APPENDIX B — GLOSSARY

Aber (Deverrian) A river mouth, an estuary.

Alar (Elvish) A group of elves, who may or may not be bloodkin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.

Alardan (Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.

Angwidd (Dev.) Unexplored, unknown.

Annwn (Welsh, literally “no place”) The name of the world to which the Deverrians emigrated.

Archon (translation of the Bardekian “atzenarlen”) The elected head of a city-state (Bardekian “at”).

Astral The plane of existence directly “above” or “within” the etheric (qv). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure House of Images.

Aura The field of electromagnetic energy that permeates and emanates from every living being.