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"IT MAY NOT HAPPEN HERE"
"That&039;s what they said about the Plague"
Shavus Ciarnin, Arche of the Order of the Morkensik Wizards, flashed an irritated look at his old friend&039;s pupil - Rhion the Brown merely pushed his spectacles a little y forefinger and returned the glare calmly Old Jaldis the Blind brushed a tendril of milk-white hair from the tattered blanket that wrapped his thin shoulders and moved a little closer to the broall of chimney bricks which was the tiny attic&039;s only source of heat "So they did," he observed mildly "I do not see how it can happen here or how it could have happened at all But this lack of understanding on my part does not alter the fact that it has happened there"
"Don&039;t be a fool," Ciarnin snapped irritably His scarred, sun-darkened face seeht in their deep sockets "Magic can&039;t just cease to exist! Magic is! It&039;s an eleht of the sun, like the air we breathe! Men could nothan they could keep the sun froe," the blind e replied in his curiously sweet, toneless voice
Huddled in his threadbare cloak at his master&039;s feet - the room only boasted two chairs - Rhion could barely recall what Jaldis&039; true voice had been like He&039;d only heard it upon one occasion, when he was sixteen, a few &039;s troops had arrested Lord Henak, Jaldis&039; then-patron, and torn out Jaldis&039; tongue and eyes to keep hiht the traitor earl and his court h City of Nerriok The only reason they hadn&039;t cut off the wizard&039;s hands as as because they&039;d feared he&039;d die of gangrene before judgment could be passed
For the eleven years since his acquittal, Jaldis had spoken bystrapped to his chest, a sounding-chaut, even as he saw - after a fashion and with head-splitting concentration - by ht of opal, crystal, and gold Charging the left lens with spells of seeing had been Rhion&039;s first atte surge of joy he&039;d felt when he&039;d seen the lattices of the crystal&039;s inner structure shift and change, seen life stir deep in the opals&039; pale, fiery wells The sense of release had been al-open of some locked core of bone deep in his chest, the realization that all those dreae madnesses which had whispered in his mind since childhood had been real
He re and delirium which had followed, for of course he&039;d been far too young to atte like the power needed for such spells He&039;d tried desperately to keep his illness hidden - it had been his parents&039; first clue to their only son&039;s abilities, and he&039;d come back to consciousness to the news that they had published, in all the teh he&039;d never told Jaldis, Rhion&039;s own extre of those spells
"And yet youdrone went on, "that there are places in this world where there is no air - in the depths of oceans and rivers - and no light, in caves and crevices indeed, for half the turning of the day there is no light anywhere And there are places, as we all knohere runted, and the back of his cracked and much-mended chair creaked with the uneasyInn, which had served Jaldis and Rhion as lodgings for the last two and a half years, was unheated, save for the warmth which radiated from the bricks of the kitchen chis like this one it saved theid warmth of the low-plains surip, the room was unspeakable There was no fireplace in the room itself, nor any kind of candle or brazier - the landlord having an almost hysterical fear of fire - but, despite the fact that the ere closed against the bitter cold by heavy wooden shutters, the lack of light posed little probleed, and old - sat in coe&039;s square, ugly face and coarse shock of iron-gray hair as easily as if the rooht And he sa the pale eyes shifted at the s "Any fool knows about those"
"But this is more than the Chambers of Silence," Jaldis went on, "that lords build into the dungeons of their palaces to hold a wizard&039;s power in check - more than the pheelas root that numbs our skills, more than the spells of silence, the fields of silence, that a powerful eborn foes" Behind sunken and shriveled eyelids ruined aze could still encoray-haired old ex-soldier opposite hi man at his feet From the top of a stack of books beside his chair, Jaldis&039; opal spectacles seeaze, and the old man&039;s hand, deft and shapely before arthritis had deformed it, stroked subconsciously at the talismans of pohich festooned the rosewood soundbox like queer and glittering seaweed upon a rock
"I aic does not exist at all, and has not existed for &039;s preposterous," Shavus retorted "What you think you heard what you ry and diset uncoed broool of his robe
"I knohat it is that I felt" Jaldis&039; thin face hardened with a flash of angry pride, though the monotonous voice of the soundbox did not alter "I have opened a Dark Well and through it have seen into the Void which lies between all the infinite number of universes of which the Cosmos is made! And in that Void" The sweet, shrill tones sank "In that Void I heard a voice crying out of a world where ic had once existed, but now exists no more"
"Jaldis, old friend" Shavus leaned forward placatingly, causing the ruinous chair to e you didn&039;t see it, didn&039;t hear it But I aic has ceased to exist in some other universe, someone there could make his voice heard in the Void? I&039;ve studied the Void as well, you know I&039;ve opened Dark Wells into it, to try to glilad so his ar a little ht when Jaldis asked e to you about this was the first I&039;d even heard of the things"
"Which is as it should be," the Arche for the young - or the light-minded"
He turned back to face the blindskeleton in cloak and quilts which all but hid the tattered brown robes of the foreh, seamed face softened "Old friend, in all my studies of the Void, in all h it, I&039;ve never encountered a world wherethat you heard sorounds to risk the hideous danger of crossing the Void itself, as you&039;re asking , Shavus," the old o there Someone must help them Don&039;t you see that"
Heavy footsteps on the narroooden spiral of the stairsrose four floors above the courat of ever-protruding balconies and upper floors see web of clotheslines andbuildings against which it leaned Rhion frequently wondered ould happen if any of the overcrowded teneiods that made up the river quays quarter of Felsplex were to disappear Beyond a doubt the entire district would co down like a house of cards
It was the landlord Rhion recognized the tread Pulling his cloak tighter about hi the few pieces of furniture which cluttered even that tiny chaht to flicker like will-o&039;-the-wisp above his head The wavery glea shadows outlining with pitiless emphasis the cracks in the plaster of the walls, the stained bea drying, the chipped cups and water-vessels, and the precious books and scrolls arranged neatly along the table&039;s rear edge Darkness would have been less depressing, but Rhion had long ago learned that those ere not ht disproportionately unnerving
"Lady to see you," the landlord grunted, scratching his crotch
"Are you - er - a wizard?"
Rhion fully tired of the question and of the dubious look that invariably accorown his beard as soon as he was old enough to do so, but the short-clipped, scruffy brown tangle evidently did nothing to dispel the boyishness of his face nor the way his wide-set blue eyes were nified by the lenses of his spectacles Short, unobtrusive, and of the compact, sturdy build which slips so easily into chubbiness, even without a wizard&039;s ability to move unobserved he would have been the last person anyone noticed in a crowd
The lady aiting for him in the smallest of the inn&039;s private parlors had obviously been expecting so with Are you - er - a lady? but suppressed the ienially and said, "We come in all shapes and sizes, mistress Would you trust me more if I had horns and a tail?"
She let out an unsteady titter and her eyes, above a concealing veil of purple-embroidered silk, strayed to the hem of his robe as if she really expected to see the jointed tail of a scorpion-grihed Gold pieces to barleycorns she wants a love-potion
"And how may I serve you?" he asked, still with a s the question in his capacity as wizard was an i so in the capacity of bar-boy, a position he&039;d occasionally filled at the Black Pig when things got bad If my father could see loved hands clenched upon the scrubbed oak tabletop "There is a man"
Rhion sat down on the opposite side of the table, folded his hands, and nodded encouragingly Above the edge of the veil, her eyes were dark, enorold; her cloak was lined within the most fashionable scent shops in the City of Circles, he could price her perfume to within a few royals, and it wasn&039;t cheap
She went on, softly and simply as a child, "He must love me or I shall die"
"And he doesn&039;t"
The delicate brows above those iically "He doesn&039;t know I&039;m alive He is fickle, frivolous his affections turn on a whi that will make him love me"
Rhion had never, personally, been able to fatho the love of people who didn&039;t know they were alive, but this was far from the first time he&039;d encountered the phenomenon, or used the proceeds to put food on the table
"Look," he said gently "Are you sure he&039;s the kind of man you want? If he&039;s that fickle, that frivolous A love-potion won&039;t change what a person is Only - and only teh," she breathed, and clasped her hands at her breast as if to contain the throbbing of her heart Her cloak, falling back a little, showed strand upon strand of filigreed silver beads at her throat, glearound of ribbon and featherwork like a field of suard, I know I can make him love me If once I hold him in my arms, I knoill come back" She swayed forward and clutched his hand, as if fearing he would rise to his towering five-feet-five and denounce her as a strumpet "Oh, name your price!"
They always said, Naoing rate on love-philters was and had also learned that the rich especially would be screaistrates if the sum quoted were so much as a dequin above it
He fetched candles fro automatically as he passed the door of the co wine from boiled-leather cups beside that room&039;s enormous hearth Unlike the attics, the commons and the private parlors downstairs were pleasantly warm, redolent of beer and woodsmoke, sweat, onion stew, and the sawdust that strewed the floor Judging by their clothes, the chair bearers were hired ht theone into business, for of course his client, no matter how rich she ould have used hired bearers to bring her here, rather than her own household slaves
No lady of respectable fa to a place like the Black Pig, let alone to visit a wizard People did visit wizards, of course, and pay for their services, in spite of the fulod in the landscape, the same way his father had visited the more expensive prostitutes and hisof hair They just didn&039;t talk about it As he brought the tapers back to the table, he are of the way his client clutched her cloak about her and of the apprehension in the doelike eyes gazing at hiain, drawing as far froh-backed chair would allow; and when he said, "Take off your glove," her painted eyelids reat a play as if he&039;d asked her to remove her dress
Fro the herbal powder that was the basis of all love-philters, a supply of which he kept made up beforehand From another pocket he drew the piece of red chalk he always carried and a goose-feather He explained, "For a love-potion to work, it has to carry the the scent, the essence, of your flesh"
"I know" Her voice sank to a whisper "They said you you would mix it upon my naked body"
Before he could stop hienerally we do, but this table&039;s awfully hard and the fire&039;s gone down"
"I would not ue in exasperation, both at hi it was one