“How dare you!” Eliseth rose to the bait. “I’m the only Weather-Mage in the world! If I deal with them, the Southerners will be lucky to havejapy survivors, let alone that redheaded bitch! I’ve seen the maps,” she went on more calmly. “The Southern Lands have huge mountain ranges and vast deserts, and even jungle, if you go far enough south. With topography like that, it’s easy to produce violent weather. A sandstorm in the right place, or unseasonal blizzards in the mountains, could solve our problem. It would also soften up the Southern races for conquest,” she added persuasively.
“Eliseth, you can’t!” The bottle jerked in Bragar’s hands, splashing brandy on the white tiled floor. “You’ll alter the weather everywhere! It could take centuries to restore the balance!”
Eliseth shrugged. “So what? Who cares if we lose a few thousand Mortals to storms or famine? With their numbers reduced, they’ll be easier to control. We need not suffer, now we know Finbarr’s preserving spell. We’ll have Elewin stockpile food in the catacombs, and keep it indefinitely. It’s not as though we had many mouths to feed nowadays.”
Gods, she was ruthless! Bragar was both impressed and appalled. Once he had been the instigator of their plots, but now that it was time to act instead of talk, he was finding himself increasingly out of his depth. It was one thing to talk about Negative Magic, but having to deal with those things from the Caldron had jarred his confidence badly. Bragar gulped his drink, remembering the horror of the Wraiths, How could Eliseth be so composed? Her slender form looked delicate and brittle as a spear of ice, yet she throve on situations that turned his blood to water. His vision of her, submissive and conquered, evaporated. He was losing this game; he knew it now. His one hope lay in going along with her—and waiting for her to overreach herself. Then, at last, it would be his turn.
Bragar decided on a change of tactics. “Maybe you’re right—” He cut the words off, alerted by a warning prickle at the base of his neck, by the merest hint of a sound outside. Overturning his chair, he shot across the room and flung the door open.
“Bragar, what are you doing?”
The Fire-Mage peered at the empty stairway, then closed the door, shaking his head in puzzlement. “I thought , , .”
Elewin, pressed flat to the wall round the curve of the staircase, let out the breath he had been holding in a long sigh. That had been close! For a moment he considered returning, but there was no sense in taking risks. He had heard enough, and the information must be passed on. He hurried downstairs and let himself out of the Tower.
Gods! Would spring never come? This accursed winter was lingering forever. After several hours within Miathan’s warm chambers, Elewin shivered in the bitmgly cold air. A new sprinkling of snow had fallen while he’d been tending the Archmage, but the night skies were clear now, and the temperature had dropped sharply. The snow, frozen to a hard, brittle crust, crunched loudly beneath his boots as he crossed the courtyard, and Elewhrgianced nervously up at the lighted window of Eliseth’s room. If they should hear him, and look out . . . He’d never be able to explain why he was going to the library, especially at this time of night. Miathan had no need of books nowadays, he thought wryly.
Since Finbarr’s death, the library had lain dark and empty. The preserving spells, which required frequent renewing, were already decaying, and as Elewin pushed open the heavy door he heard a rustling patter like wind-blown leaves as mice and cockroaches scattered for cover. The Steward shook his head sadly. Finbarr would have been appalled. The irreplaceable knowledge of centuries, which he had tended with such care and skill, ending up as rat’s nests! I must get someone to see to this, Elewin thought, hating the notion of Finbarr’s precious volumes moldering beneath a shroud of cobwebs and dust. It was disrespectful to the Archivist’s memory to let his life’s work go to ruin—but in truth, there was no one to tend them, Most of the servartts had fled in terror on the Night of Death, as people in the city called it, and few were willing now to come near the Academy. Elewin was hard-pressed to maintain the basic necessities, let alone spare a servant to dust books.
Not daring to venture a light, the Steward groped his way across the long, musty room, cursing as he bruised himself on the corner of a table, and fell over a displaced chair. If only there had been a moon, to cast some light through the tall windows. If only he had Mages’ sight! At last he reached the farther end, recognizing Jtjy feel the recessed door that led down into the catacombs. Smiling in the darkness, he slipped an intricate key from his pocket. Eliseth and Bragar thought all the keys to the archives were safe in their keeping, and it was small wonder they wanted no one in the catacombs, considering what they had stored down there! But they did not know that Finbarr had given Anvar his own key. Elewin had found it among his scanty belongings, after he fled. Entering the archives, the Steward carefully locked the door again behind him.
The walls of the corridor were icy to the touch, and Elewin had trouble lighting the lantern. The flint kept slipping from his frozen fingers, forcing him to kneel and grope on the floor, cursing. How things had changed! Once he had thrashed any servant caught swearing in the Academy! But that was before he’d become a spy and a traitor to the Magefolk. Their changes had forced the change in him.
Having finally managed to light the lantern, Elewin relaxed a little as its mellow glow banished the darkness, making the frigid air of the corridor seem warmer. Thank the Gods! Being down here in the dark with those Wraiths was more than he could bear! Though they had been disabled, it was easy to imagine that he could hear them stirring . . . Waking . . . Elewin shuddered as he began to thread his cautious way through the maze of passages and stairways beneath the Academy. When he passed the room where the Wraiths were stored, he held his breath and hurried.
The blade came whistling out of the darkness, not half an inch from his face. Elewin jumped back round the sharp bend in the corridor, almost dropping the lantern in his fright. “It’s me, you fool!” he hissed. “What the blazes are you doing up here? You nearly took my bloody nose off!”
“Sorry.” The small, wiry form of Parric the Cavalrymaster appeared round the corner. He was grinning from ear to ear. “I must be getting rusty. It was meant to be your head!”
Elewin was not amused. “Why didn’t you wait in our usual place? What if I’d been one of the Magefolk?”
Parric shrugged, “You were late,” he complained, “I was freezing my bollocks off down there, Elewin. I had to move about, to keep warm!”
“Never mind,” the Steward sighed, It was clear where he was learning all his bad language nowadays. “I have news for you. Come farther down where it’s safer, and we’ll talk,”
“I don’t know why you’re so worried,” Parric grumbled. “Who in their right mind would come down here on a night like this? I swear there’s icicles growing on the end of my—”
“Porricf”
The Cavalrymaster chuckled.
The ancient parts of the catacombs that Anvar had discovered were little more than a series of natural caves, set low in the end of the promontory. They had been stripped of their treasures now, and the footfalls of the two men echoed loudly in the bare chambers. Singe the ancient spells that guarded their contents had been broken, damp had begun to seep in from the nearby river. The dark walls were jeweled with ice crystals that splintered the lamplight, and the floor was slick and treacherous underfoot. Elewin gripped the lantern tightly to prevent it slipping from his numb grasp, and wished that Finbarr still lived. In the Archivist’s day, these caverns had been lit by Magelight, and kept warm and dry by means of his spells.
“See? I told you. Colder than a prostitute’s heart down here.” Parric pulled the remains of a broken wooden chest out of a corner and sat down, motioning for Elewin to join him. “I don’t suppose you brought some food with you? Or a bottle?” he asked hopefully.