Night of The Eye dom-1

by Mary Kirchoff

  "I'm not sorry," she said kindly. "You didn't kidnap me. I never do anything I don't want to do." Esme set her chin. "Which is why I'm not leaving the order without a fight."

  "What do you have in mind?" he asked, sitting up.

  She seized his hands in both of hers, eyes pleading. "Let's go back to Belize's lab right now. We could get those spellbooks before he realizes we're on to him and destroys the evidence. Justarius will be able to read the spell language and have the proof he needs to persuade Par-Salian and LaDonna of Belize's guilt. Then Belize will be the one expelled from the Order of Red Robes, not us."

  Guerrand's brow creased. "I don't see how Belize's guilt or innocence will change the fact that we broke into his villa."

  Esme dropped his hands. "Of course it will!" she snapped, her frustration mounting. "In the first place, we wouldn't have gone there if he weren't trying to kill you-"

  "You sound awfully sure about his guilt in that."

  "Aren't you?"

  He gave a nod.

  Esme looked smug. "In the second place," she continued, "if Belize is expelled before the Council of Three discusses our situation, then we have nothing to fear. Justarius will undoubtedly take his place on the council, and Par-Salian will vote with him. That's two votes out of three, which is all we need!" Warming quickly to the idea, Esme could scarcely contain her excitement.

  "It would be like playing double or nothing in a game of bones," said Guerrand, shaking his head. "It's just too risky, and not at all like the level-headed Esme I know."

  "What's so wrong about taking charge of your life?" she demanded.

  "Until recently, I would have said 'nothing.' Now I'm not so sure." Guerrand's dark eyes were focused on a faraway place. "I've lived most of my life doing what others wanted, and the only one I hurt was myself. But since I left Castle DiThon to study magic, it seems I've done nothing but hurt people. I deserted Kirah and reneged on a promise so that I could follow magic, and now my family and castle are under siege. I allowed Lyim to go to Ergoth and fight my battles, so that I could continue as Justarius's apprentice."

  Guerrand buried his head in his hands as the list of his transgressions mounted. "Last, but not least, it's my fault that we both stand to be expelled." He gave Esme a dark, bitter stare. "You tell me what good has come of indulging my selfish ambitions?"

  Esme sat next to him and squeezed his hand. "I know it's difficult now to think of anything good, but not long ago you said you'd never been happier."

  He snatched his hand back. "That was before everything went wrong!"

  Esme moved away to stare out her small window. "I know what it's like to have everything go wrong." She said nothing more for many moments. Guerrand just waited.

  "It pains me even now to think of those days, when I thought it important to prove that a mere girl could follow in the great Melar's footsteps." Esme gave a sad, humorless smile.

  She looked away from the window, at Guerrand. "My father had magical ambitions only for my brothers. Each, in his turn, rejected magic, afraid to tell Father that he had caused them to hate, not love, it. My father disowned them, leaving them without money or connections or training. No one would even speak to them on the streets of Fangoth for fear of suffering a wizard's wrath."

  Esme brushed the bangs from her eyes. "Left without sons, my father's eyes at last turned to me. I was thrilled by the attention and studied hard to satisfy him." She sighed deeply. "It wasn't long before I understood why my brothers had all fled. The great Melar was never satisfied."

  Esme moved to stare silently out the window again. "The difference between my brothers and me was that I stayed with Father because I had grown to love magic. To impress him, or escape him-I don't know which-I suggested I was ready to declare an alignment to properly begin training for the Test. 'You're a girl!' he'd thundered. 'You'll be fortunate if you're ever ready to take the Test.' "

  A tear rolled down Esme's cheek, and she dashed it away. "I knew that he was just afraid to lose control of me. What he didn't know was that he already had. I slipped away that night and traveled to Wayreth. I never sent word." Her thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. "He had ways of finding me if he cared to know where I went."

  Esme fiercely wiped away the last of her tears. "So, you see, if I'm expelled, I've nowhere to go. I can't return to Fangoth. My father would know I've failed, as he'd predicted." She pounded a fist on the sill. "I couldn't abide that, Rand!"

  "You wouldn't have to go home," Guerrand said, standing close behind her. His arms went about her shoulders, and she let him pull her back against his chest. "We could start again someplace else. Together."

  "I would always know the truth," she whispered so softly he couldn't be sure he heard her. A huge, shuddering sigh racked her body, as if she were resigning herself to her fate. She turned suddenly in Guerrand's embrace, gave a trembling smile, and pressed tear-streaked lips to his cheek. "Thank you."

  His eyes, so near her own, went wide. "For what?"

  "For… saying that," Esme said simply. She stirred in the embrace, and Guerrand reluctantly let her go. Grimacing, she lowered herself gingerly onto her cot, dragging her left leg up to rest. "Justarius's elixir seems to be wearing off. I'd ask him for more, but he's likely left for Wayreth, and I hate to ask Denbigh. Do you have any more of those herbs that helped me in the lab?"

  Guerrand knelt by her solicitously. "You took all I had, but there are more in my chamber." He jumped to his feet. "It'll take me a few moments to mix them."

  Esme looked at him sweetly. "Would you mind?"

  Guerrand hastened to the door, happy to help ease her suffering. "I'll be back before you know it," he said. She smiled her appreciation as he disappeared into the antechamber.

  Guerrand dashed through the formal dining area that bridged their rooms. It took him ten minutes to collect and crush a sufficient amount of dried peppermint and meadowsweet and steep it in oil of cloves.

  Vial in hand, Guerrand dashed toward the door. On impulse, he checked his appearance in his looking glass, then wished he hadn't. He looked like he'd been dragged through a knothole, but he hadn't time even to change. Esme was in pain and waiting for his herbs.

  Slicking a moistened hand over his mop of dark hair, Guerrand hastened back through the dining room. He forced his steps and breathing to slow in the antechamber. A sense of propriety suggested he knock at the door to her sleeping chamber. There was no answer. He waited and knocked again. When still there was no response, he poked his head through the curtain that hung in the doorway.

  "Esme?" he whispered, wondering if she had fallen asleep after the day's travails. What he found in the sleeping chamber nearly made him drop the vial he carried.

  "Zagarus!"

  The familiar was strutting back and forth on Esme's cot. Guerrand saw his own pack at the bird's feet, the flap open. The young woman herself was nowhere to be seen.

  "Where's Esme?" the apprentice demanded, his fingers growing cold about the vial of herbs when he saw the fragment of mirror on the chest by the cot.

  She's gone! She stepped into the mirror! Zag pointed his beak at the glistening glass.

  I flew to her window, looking for you so that I could slip into my nest in the mirror. Esme saw me but was busy stuffing her pack with components. Suddenly, she slung the pack over her shoulder and said, "I don't know if you can understand me, but tell Rand I'll be back in the time it takes to leap from the mirror, grab the spellbooks, and jump back here." Those were her exact words. Zagarus heaved a sigh of relief at having got through it all. What did she mean, Rand?

  "It means she went back to Belize's," Guerrand said numbly. He snatched up the mirror and felt the jagged edges press his flesh.

  What are we going to do?

  Guerrand sank down next to the bird and considered the question. He wasn't so much angry at Esme as anxious. "Wait for her to return," he said at last. "If everything goes well, she should be able to return in under ten minutes. She could be back an
y moment, then." He remembered her splinted limb with a frustrated sigh. "I'll give her a little more time for her leg."

  Guerrand let twenty minutes pass before he allowed the fear to pound at his temples. Where was she? He looked futilely at the mirror and closed his eyes. Something was wrong. He would not let his mind conjure possibilities. Only one thing was clear: he had to go and find her.

  "Come on, Zag," he said, mirror in hand as he raced back to his room. Guerrand snatched up herbs and other items he used for his best spells and added them to the spellbook he placed in his pack.

  The apprentice glanced once more around his chamber and spied his swordbelt with sword and dagger, long unused, hanging from a wall peg. Whether due to a premonition or the memory of Belize's monstrosities, Guerrand pulled it down and buckled it around his waist.

  Guerrand set the mirror on his desk, then waved Zagarus into the glass first. Stretching his arms above his head as if swan-diving into the Strait of Ergoth, Guerrand slipped into the shiny surface of the magical mirror.

  A heartbeat later in the foggy mirror world, Guerrand envisioned the looking glass in Belize's laboratory and stepped through it. Instantly he sensed an unnatural stillness, like the calm after a violent thunderstorm. Holding

  his breath, Guerrand walked around the shelves. His booted feet crunched over glass. The floor was covered with shattered beakers, colored preserving liquids, and assorted organ components. The shelves that had so recently been neatly stacked were now bare, swept clean. The stench was worse than he'd remembered.

  Guerrand kicked a hen heart out of his path. "Esme?" he called softly.

  She's not here, Rand, Zagarus said. I'm by Belize's table. You've got to see this.

  Blood hammering at his temples, Guerrand raced past the steps to the platform. Only one torch lit the area containing the table that Guerrand knew had held Belize's spellbooks. That lone light revealed enough to raise Guerrand's gorge. The entire floor and much of the walls were covered with spattered gore. The nauseating blotches were broken by scorch marks Guerrand knew came only from the intense heat of magical fireballs. Severed limbs and heads, obliterated torsos, and oozing organs were everywhere. Much of the carnage had been blasted beyond recognition.

  Guerrand pinched his nose shut and began breathing through his mouth before wading toward Zagarus. The bird was perched upon the table, trying desperately to put space between himself and the grisly remains of a dead male dwarf who had the head of a large house cat. Between the bird and the dwarf on the table there were only dusty outlines where once spell-books had been.

  Esme took the books and left the lab before Belize returned, Guerrand told himself. Seeing them gone, the archmage flew into a fury and destroyed everything he saw.

  If that's true, why hasn't Esme emerged from the mirror? demanded Zagarus, reading Guerrand's thoughts.

  "I don't know!" snapped Guerrand, his mind racing out of control. Had Belize caught her stealing his books and… Closing his eyes, the apprentice said with agonizing surety, "He's taken Esme somewhere."

  Well, where do we look-"Kyeow!" Zagarus sprang from the table as the head of the dead dwarf-cat began to stir. Though the right side of its furry face was gone, the one remaining green cat's eye struggled to open. Guerrand was at once riveted and repulsed. His hand went impulsively to his dagger and stayed there while he waited, watching.

  The creature seemed to give up trying to raise its head, though the eye remained open, focused on Guerrand. The blood-matted fur beneath the orb began to move up and down, and Guerrand realized that it was trying to speak with what was left of its mouth. A high-pitched keening erupted from the cat's face. Though modulated, the sounds made no sense to Guerrand.

  "I can't understand you," growled Guerrand in frustration. "Are you asking me to end your suffering?"

  The gruesome creature seemed to understand Guerrand, for it stopped wailing and unmistakably shook what remained of its head. A mangled dwarven hand came up with agonizing slowness. It trembled above the tabletop briefly Then one stubby digit, the only one left, began to push around the dwarf's own blood and ichor until an outline emerged of tall, etched pillars that Guerrand could not mistake: Stonecliff.

  "You're telling me this is where Belize has taken my friend?"

  The pathetic creature began to nod, then gave one short, violent shudder before falling still in the blessed peace of death.

  Guerrand reached out a trembling hand and closed its eye.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The archmage Belize touched a fingernail, yellow and hideously twisted, to the throbbing slash across his right cheek. He would have to wash the gash before it festered, considering the foul, decayed claw that had caused the injury.

  It was all the young chit's fault, Belize fumed. She'd unleashed the creatures who caused the cut, the monstrosities he kept locked in his back room. It did not help his mood to admit that he'd never believed his creations to be more threatening than starved fleas; he should have killed them long ago, anyway.

  When Belize thought of the young woman whose hands he'd caught upon Fistandantilus's Observations on the Structure of Reality, his temper flared anew. The mage had returned to Villa Nova to retrieve his spell-books and some personal affects before leaving for Stonecliff. The second his foot hit the floor of the lab the creatures had been upon him. He'd easily obliterated them all with a few well-placed magic missiles, but not before one had managed to slice his cheek. That one he'd blasted beyond matter with a fireball. Then he'd collected his spellbooks and teleported the woman to his chamber for questioning.

  Belize knew she must be a spy, for he'd instantly recognized her as Justarius's apprentice. Besides, the fact that he'd caught her with her hands on his books made it obvious she was no casual thief. How much did she know of his plans, and how much had she already told Justarius? How did she know enough about his mirror to try to escape through it? Most puzzling of all to Belize was why Justarius would send a clumsy apprentice to do his sleuthing.

  The young woman now sat stiffly in Belize's spartan bedchamber in the level above the lab, still under the control of the bind spell. The archmage squinted at her. Despite her unfeminine attire, she stirred some vague memory beyond Justarius. Belize's purple-tinged lips pulled back in a slow smile of recognition: the Jest.

  "You put your colors on Guerrand DiThon," he said, watching her reaction closely. "So the jackanapes discovered the mirror's abilities. It's unfortunate for you that he shared the knowledge."

  The woman looked at him mutely, but she could not keep the fear from flickering in her amber eyes, confirming Belize's words.

  "All that remains to be answered is what he intends to do with the knowledge."

  Esme dug her nails into the armrests, her lips a tight line.

  The mage raised his clawlike hand to slap some sound from her. His pale palm got to within one length of her face when Esme's protective armband sent a shock through the wizard. Belize recoiled several steps. His normally ruddy face was now crimson with rage. He spat a short phrase, and two tiny, blazing points of light shot out from his eyes, circling Esme at dizzying speed. The beams flashed through her pouches and pack, through her pockets and trousers, and up and down the entire length of her body like tiny bloodhounds. They stopped momentarily at the armband. Before Esme realized what was happening, the metal gadget was off her arm and floating through the air to Belize. He regarded it poisonously, then extended his hand. Belize curled the fingers into a fist, and the suspended bracelet crumpled, then fell to the cold granite floor.

  Belize looked at her coldly. "You know, of course, that I could rip any information from your skull with a spell. However, I shan't waste another moment on Guerrand DiThon. He's no more a threat to me than those demented creatures in the laboratory.

  "Speaking of them," the mage said, wagging his finger, "take warning, if you wish to live through this day. I'll not tolerate any more defiance from you. I should slay you right now for loosing my experiments t
o rise against me. That little battle cost me precious time-" he touched his cheek "-not to mention blood."

  "I didn't need to inspire those pathetic things," snapped Esme. "Is it any wonder they hated you after what you did to them?"

  Belize cocked a brow. "I should feel chastened by a common spy?" He touched an alcohol-soaked patch of cotton to the cut on his face, then threw the swab away. "Perhaps I should describe to you the punishment I normally mote out to spies and thieves. It's been compared to being turned inside out, though I suspect it is actually much worse."

  Belize turned with an evil grin from the pile of personal papers he was sorting. "But I've thought of a new punishment for you. Since you seem to have such sympathy for my experiments, perhaps you'll appreciate sharing their unfortunate experiences. I'll be sending you through my magical gate first, to clear the path of any foul debris accumulated over the centuries. I had thought to use my apprentice, but I haven't been able to find that useless dandy, so I suppose I must thank you for saving me time."

  "Justarius will bring you up before a full conclave when he finds out you've kidnapped me," she hissed.

  Belize regarded her with lazy-lidded contempt. "After tonight no mortal mage will be able to touch me. I'll be beyond the circles of the universe."

  Adding the last of his things to the chest, Belize slammed its heavy lid shut. "Time to go," he announced. Scratching his goatee, he said, "I really must think of a more convenient way to travel with you." Belize abruptly snapped his fingers, nails clicking. "I have it!"

  The mage reached toward Esme and slowly closed his fingers. "Ligir."

  Esme screamed as her bones began to contract, snapping and popping in protest. Her heart thundered like the steps of a giant in pursuit, then reversed its pace and steadily slowed. Beyond the excruciating pain, she felt her pulse's last terrified, fluttering beats as the world grew larger, then silent as snow.