He looked no less relieved by that than by her arrival. He muttered indignantly as he gathered up what she’d been reading and continued to complain rather loudly as he put things away. Morgan thanked him politely and left the cellar. Perhaps he needed to be aboveground more often where he could at least see the sun. It might have improved his temperament.
She walked up the steps and paused at the doorway to let her eyes adjust to the brightness. It was obviously well past noon; that she hadn’t noticed was proof enough of the distressing nature of what she’d read. She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face, wishing that so doing would wipe away her unease.
“Have you heard nothing about her?”
The whispered voice from just around the corner startled her back to herself. She would have continued on out of the shadowy stairwell, but there was something about the intensity of the whisper that kept her where she was. Besides, she would likely give the man fright enough to render him useless for the day if she popped out into the light. It was only altruism that motivated her.
“The lady Morgan?” said another man.
Morgan paused. When the gossip was about her, how could she not listen?
“Aye.” The first voice lowered. “You know, she spent a handful of years on the other side of Melksham Island.”
Morgan pursed her lips. She could just imagine where this was going. There were many sides of Melksham, but none containing anything so famous as the university.
Except Weger’s tower, of course.
“It cannot be,” the second voice whispered in astonishment. “At Gobhann?”
Morgan nodded her head in time to the first man’s wheezing.
“Aye, ’tis so.”
“But rumor has it Weger trains assassins there!”
“Mercenaries,” the first voice corrected, but he didn’t sound any less troubled. “Or so ’tis said. Who knows what really happens behind those impenetrable walls?” He paused. “I’ve heard that he turns out men who will only take on tasks that are extremely dangerous or impossibly difficult. Ones that no simple soul would dare contemplate, and no seasoned soldier would dare attempt.”
“In truth?” the second said reverently.
“So I’ve heard.” He paused, perhaps to gather the courage to divulge even more appalling details. “He marks them, you know.”
“Who?” the second breathed.
“Weger, you fool! He marks those who win their freedom from his tower.”
“How?”
“None so marked will speak of it. But you can tell. The coldness in their eyes speaks for them.”
Morgan snorted. These men would do better to attend to their lectures more and listen at doors less. She cleared her throat loudly and stepped out into the passageway. It was an open passageway that surrounded a courtyard full of flowers and a fountain. The passageway contained two wheezing scholars who gaped at her then sped away as quickly as if she stood to draw her sword and end their gossiping lives at the slightest provocation.
Morgan shrugged. There was truth to what they’d said about her, though she didn’t think her eyes were all that cold.
“Good day to you, my dear.”
Morgan pursed her lips as she turned around to find Nicholas behind her. He was leaning against a post, watching her with a smile.
Morgan scowled. “Eavesdropping, my lord?”
“It seems to have occupied your time well enough.”
“Ha,” she said with a snort. “Idle gossip might be interesting, but it never yields anything of substance.”
“Hmmm,” was his unsatisfactory response.
Morgan turned to face him.
“And what of you?” she asked. “Are you going to divulge your secrets now or will I need to pass another dreadful night on that horrible bed?”
He laughed and came over to draw her arm through his. “Dreadful indeed. Come, my dear, and let us find supper. I will tell you all you want to know after that.”
She soon found herself yet again on that comfortable bench, with a hot fire nearby and the promise of a fine repast to come. But apparently Nicholas wasn’t going to wait for victuals to arrive before he said his piece.
“I need a favor,” he said, without preamble.
“Anything, of course,” Morgan said, before she thought better of it. It wasn’t in her nature to promise before determining the lay of the land, but how was she to deny this man any whim he might have? Besides, he wouldn’t have sent for her if he hadn’t needed her.
Nicholas studied her in silence for several moments, then rose. He walked to a table set against a wall, rummaged about through stacks of papers, and came up with a key. This he used to open a plain wooden box that sat on the windowsill, in the company of several other ordinary wooden boxes. He drew forth something wrapped in cloth and brought it back with him. Resuming his seat, he laid his burden on his knees.
“There is a history behind this,” he said, “but the knowing of it will not aid you at present.”
“If you say so,” she said, looking with interest at what Nicholas held in his hands.
Nicholas smiled at her briefly, then pulled back several folds of cloth, finally revealing a slim dagger. The late-afternoon sunlight that streamed in through the window burned fiercely along the blade, as if the metal had been freshly forged. The hilt was studded with rubies and emeralds and surrounded by graceful swirls of gold and silver. The blade was a tracery of flowers and leaves, worked in a most elegant and pleasing fashion.
Morgan reached out toward it. Nicholas caught her hand before she touched the metal.
“It is not an ordinary blade,” he warned.
“I’ve handled sharper, I’ll warrant.” After all, she was a connoisseur of all things deadly. She reached out and started to take the knife.
But she had scarce touched it before a faint hint of magic had already run up her arm. She jerked her hand back in revulsion.
“ ’Tis a mage’s blade,” she choked out. She scrubbed her hand against her leg, but the feeling of magic was still on her skin. “It is covered with magic!”
“Is it?” he mused, fingering the hilt of the blade. “I suppose it might be.”
“It is vile,” she said in revulsion.
“Why are you so opposed to magic?” he asked. “I daresay it could be quite useful in the right situation.”
“It’s cheating,” she said promptly. “And unmanly. I find it to be quite a prissy way to be about your business, muttering and waggling fingers when you could just be wielding a sword.”
Nicholas smiled. “Now, that is Weger speaking through you.”
“And he was perfectly correct,” she said. “Never rely on magery was his first lesson.” And it was one she had had no trouble learning. She trusted what she could see and what was solid under her hand. Anything else was suspect. “A sword,” she repeated with a knowing nod. “There’s something to rely on.”
“I suppose so.”
Morgan looked with disfavor upon the blade. “Why do you keep such a thing?”
“Because I am the keeper of many secrets,” Nicholas said mildly.
“Well, if I were you, I would rid myself of that particular secret.”
“I agree,” he said. He patted the blade on his knees. “And that is the favor I need from you. I need you to take this blade to Neroche for me. To the king.”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“You did say anything,” he reminded her.
“I didn’t mean that kind of anything!”
Nicholas only smiled. “The king will need it.”
Morgan scrambled for something to say. She was almost certain she could not, for any price, touch that blade again. Carrying it all the way to the king was out of the question. “Why don’t you take it to the king yourself?”
“Bad knees.” He patted his knees gingerly, as if to convince her that they were indeed less than useful. “The cold makes them worse.”
She snorted. “S
cholars should not lie. It reflects poorly upon you as a group.”
He coughed weakly. “Would you send an old man on a perilous journey and deny him his few meager comforts—oh, lads, just set that down here on the table near me where I don’t need to reach too far for it.”
The servants came inside with enough food to feed half a dozen people. They arranged everything, then bowed to Nicholas and left the chamber.
“Morgan, mulled wine? Delicacies from Ghermalt?”
Meager comforts, indeed. Morgan accepted what he gave her only because it allowed her more time to think on a good reason why she couldn’t do what he asked. Unfortunately, the offensiveness of the blade aside, she was having a difficult time dredging one up. Nicholas had given her a home, a sword, and all the peaceable things in her life. How could she refuse him anything?
“So,” Nicholas said, setting the blade beside his plate and tucking into his meal, “you will do this thing for me, won’t you?”
“Ah—”
“I daresay it will be difficult,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. That, or he wasn’t listening, which she suspected was the case. “So difficult, that there are surely few who would dare attempt the quest. Fewer still who would succeed. Indeed, I daresay there is only one who could manage what needs to be done. That one is, of course, you.”
Morgan glared at him, then buried her curses in her cup.
“In the end, taking this blade to the king might possibly mean the difference between victory and defeat,” Nicholas said.
Morgan looked at him sharply. “Victory and defeat against whom, my lord?”
“Lothar,” he said easily.
Morgan wanted to apply herself to her meal, but found that quite suddenly she could not. She sat back, not trusting herself with a goblet of wine either. “In truth?”
He looked at her seriously for the first time that day. “In truth, my girl.”
She rubbed her hands over her face and sighed deeply. “Has the king lost his power?”
Nicholas paused, seemed to consider his words, then nodded. “So I’ve heard.”
“How long ago?”
“Two months is what I understand.”
She felt a little faint. “That long?”
“Aye. But again, it could be nothing but a rumor. I suppose when you take the king this blade, you’ll find out the truth of it for yourself. You’ll return and let me know?”
“Have you no shame, old man?” she said in exasperation. “I haven’t agreed to go!”
“But you will,” he said confidently. “How could you resist such a challenge?”
She wanted to say easily, but before she could get the word out, a servant broke into the solar.
“Your pardon, Your Lordship, but you are needed immediately,” he said breathlessly. “A pitched battle in the buttery!”
“I must attend to this,” Nicholas said, springing to his feet and striding spryly to the door. “Priorities, you know—”
The door shut firmly behind him. Morgan snorted. Bad knees, indeed. The man could likely outrun her. She turned her attentions back to the meager offerings before her and applied herself with single-mindedness to them. Soon, though, she found she could not eat anymore. She pushed the table away from her, then rose and began to pace about the solar.
She had absolutely no desire to go to Tor Neroche. It meant leaving Melksham and she had more than enough to do on her own poor island. Besides, she did not like to travel. Off the island, that was.
She glanced at the blade sitting next to Nicholas’s plate. She did not like the feel of it, though she could not help but admit that the blade itself was beautiful.
She turned away abruptly and found herself facing Nicholas’s desk. There was a thick book open there beneath the window and she practically leaped toward it in an effort to keep herself from having to pay any more attention to that lovely bit of silver slathered with such vile things.
She turned the pages, perhaps a little desperately, wanting nothing more than a distraction from a journey she did not want to contemplate.
And then she found she could turn no more.
She stared down at the words swimming before her and wondered why it was they seemed so perilously cold and brittle.
Then came the black mage of Ceangail, Gair by name, who never aged and begat children after a thousand years . . .
A noise outside the door startled her and she jumped as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have. She hastened away from the desk and went to stand near the fire before the door was fully opened. She shifted nervously, her face flaming, her heart racing. Nicholas shut the door behind him and returned to his seat. He sat with a gusty sigh.
“Bloodshed averted,” he said happily. He looked over his shoulder. “Come and sit, my dear.”
Morgan did, praying that he wouldn’t notice her appalling condition. She reached for her goblet of wine, but her hand was shaking so badly, she could hardly hold it.
But why?
She knew nothing of mages or magecraft and she couldn’t have cared less about the bloody black mage of Ceangail. Perhaps he had a tale that was so truly dreadful, even just the reading of his name was enough to make one unsettled. She drank deeply of her wine. No doubt she had heard his tale at some point, found it unbearable, and forgotten it, only to remember the horror and not the details . . .
Nicholas wrapped the blade back up in its velvets, then patted it meaningfully. “Now, let us seal this bargain. You will take this to the king for me, won’t you?”
“Why me?” she asked, in one last attempt to escape what was beginning to feel like Fate.
“Because you are the only one I would trust,” Nicholas said.
Well, if he was going to put it that way, she could protest no further. Besides, there was no point in arguing with Nicholas when he’d decided upon something. He would wear her down until she relented.
She sighed. “Stow it in the bottom of my pack where I need not touch it and I will do as you ask.”
He looked at her for quite some time in silence, then he leaned over and brushed the hair back from her face. He hadn’t made the gesture often, not after she was grown and needed no father’s comfort. But he’d done it the morning she’d left the university for her trip across the island to Gobhann, and he’d done it the first night she’d returned after winning her liberty.
He ran a finger over the faint mark above her brow.
“I never can decide,” he said quietly, “whose you are: mine or Weger’s.”
“You say that often.”
“I think it often.” He smiled and sat back. “You are your own, Morgan, my dear, and you carry in your heart the best of both worlds.” He patted the knife. “Take this to your king and offer him your sword as well.”
“I’ll take him the dagger,” she conceded, “but I will not stay. I have business here on the island. Important sieges.” She said it firmly, but it sounded rather hollow to her ears, as if those sieges might not be so important after all.
“Is the island big enough for important sieges?” Nicholas asked.
Morgan glared at him. “It is full to the brim with bickering lords bent on mayhem and willing to pay for aid in perpetrating it. There is work enough here for me.”
“If you say so,” Nicholas said. “Perhaps you will change your mind when you reach Tor Neroche.”
“I doubt it,” she said grimly. “Very well. I’ll go tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Surely not. You’ll need supplies. It will take me at least a se’nnight to see to them.”
“A week, old man, will leave me too spoiled to make it across Melksham, never mind finding my way to the king’s hall.”
“Then sleep on the floor, Morgan, my dear.”
She frowned. “The floor? And leave that bed to go to waste? I couldn’t.”
Nicholas laughed. “Sleep on the bed, love. It may be a while before you have another one.”
“I shudder to think,”
she muttered, but she suspected that she would indeed sleep on the bed and be grateful for it.
The remainder of the afternoon passed almost pleasantly. Morgan managed to ignore the book open behind her on Nicholas’s desk, as well as the knife lying wrapped next to it. She forced herself to taste the rest of her meal, managed nods in response to Nicholas’s questions, and endured the arrival of the lads and the tale they were treated to. By the time the evening ended and she had sought her bed, she thought she might have herself back under control.
She would take the blade to Tor Neroche, hand it to the king, then turn right around and head for home. She would only have to touch it long enough to hand it off, then she would be free of it and back to herself. Surely she had that much discipline within her.
She fell asleep without trouble, but she did dream.
She dreamed of a slim, elegant sword.
Covered with a tracery of leaves and flowers, all the things that Queen Mehar loved . . .
Three
Miach, archmage of the realm and sufferer of a kingdom-sized headache, closed the manuscript he’d been reading and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, things were no better. His chamber was an untidy, hazy blur. Perhaps that had to do with too much poring over manuscripts that had provided him with too few answers. He yawned, but that hurt his head, so he stopped. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.
He could, however, remember the last time he had felt a shudder in his spells.
It had been a fortnight ago.
A slow, almost imperceptible tremble in his spells of defense along the northern border.
He’d wondered at first if he’d just imagined it. He’d paid special attention to the border for the fortnight following, but he’d sensed nothing else.
And then, yesterday, he realized that his spells were being eroded from beneath their underpinnings, much like sand being pulled out from a bather’s feet as he stood upon the shore. It was a very gentle tide, but a relentless one.
Miach’s first thought had been Lothar.
But the tide didn’t have that stench of rottenness that permeated all that Lothar did. Indeed, there was nothing but a faint smell of evil, as if it were nothing but tainted water that washed away at his spells. It had made him wonder . . .